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Diamond Isle
Jeffrey Cooper
Abby was nicely tanned all the way up her legs from a relaxing week on the island of Sifnos. Her blonde hair was lightened by the sun. She had dropped twelve pounds during the past four months and was fitting into a dress she had actually bought for her twelve year old daughter, Nicole. It was short, colorful and tight fitting with a squared off neck line and a cup size that for her was like a push up bra. She felt good, she looked good and she knew it.
Felicia was just as beautiful as an adult as she had been as a child, with her dark hair and olive skin, her mother’s pointy chin, her excitement about the wedding showing on her face, and her figure lithe and young. They made a pretty pair, mother and daughter, waiting in Athens airport for their husband and husband to be. Jeffrey and Thom. Travelling with them were Abby’s other daughter Sarina, son in law Prakash, her sister Maryann, Nicole and her new grand daughter Kathya. She and Felicia had come to Greece a week early to make the entire wedding arrangements and reservations, selecting flowers and menus.
My last memory of Felicia was a seven-year-old Miss Junior Portsmouth riding a float in the Memorial Day Parade. When I had met them at Athens airport just an hour before, I hadn’t seen them in twenty-four years.
We looked up to see the family spring through the ‘Customs’ door, their carts overburdened with luggage.
“Ah-h, its so-o good to see you!”
They ran and chittered from one to the other totally excited, bouncing about like puppets on a string.
“Aah-h,” again.
“Mommymommy,” Nicole bounded. “Kathya can walk! She walked in London airport. Kathya. You want to show GrammaAb how you can walk?”
“Kathya, you can walk? Come show GrammaAbby.”
Kathya made four tottering steps.
Sarina beamed.
When Abby finally came to Jeffrey she held out her arms, leaned back on her heels and puckered her lips. Gosh it was good to see him. Tall, handsome and young. He looked her over, kissed here back and held her tight, pressing himself against her belly so she could feel how happy he was to see her. She demurred, conscious of her audience. Then she introduced me to everyone.
One more detail about the airport you should know. The luggage was missing. Coming on the next flight. British Air would deliver it to the hotel.
~
Abby had been skeptical when Felicia proposed this trip. The kids had been to a wedding here a year before, and fallen in love with the islands. No other place would do. She and Jeff had suggested several, and suspected Thom’s parents, John and Sue, had as well. This week of togetherness was to be followed by another week of wedding receptions in Bhopal, India, where their cousins and uncles live. When they sent out the invitations they expected maybe twenty people to come.
Their first inkling that the idea would be a hit was one evening out to dinner with their friends, Roz and Dennis, and Fred and Betsy. Jeff complained to them of the scheme, and they laughed hysterically.
“If you invite us,” they four said in unison, “we’ll come.”
For them it was a perfect excuse for a vacation in the Greek Isles.
For Abby, the hard way to run a wedding. They didn’t think any of their friends would come, but there they were accepting an invitation they hadn’t gotten yet, and that got them thinking.
“Maybe it isn’t so ridiculous after all,” Jeff tested on the drive home.
“I never thought so,” Abby countered. “It was you that said that.”
He let it pass.
Well, they did invite them, and they did come. So did Harold and Janis, Jeffrey’s parents. Sara and Aaron, his niece and nephew. Their friend Bobwebsta with his Dutch sweet heart Ilsa. Uncle Ikram came from London to officiate. Abby’s mother, Eileen, who we call “Gramma,” with her great grand daughter, Meredith. Abby’s sisters Maryann and Priscilla, and Priscilla’s daughter Stehpania. To their astonishment over seventy had said yes. Felicia and Thom had friends coming from Holland, Sweden, Australia, China and France, plus all the Americans. Heidi from Harvard, Natalie from China. Abby’s son, Salim was coming with his girlfriend Eileen from Ireland. To this crowd, Sifnos was centrally located.
But I was Abby’s biggest surprise, her college room mate at the University of New Hampshire. She had married her chemistry professor, a man from India and I had toured in Europe as a dancer, finally finding myself an ex-pat in Russia. Of course I came. I was to share Abby and Jeff’s flat for the week, with Maryann, Nicole and Gramma.
We all stayed that night at the Student’s Inn. It was right on the main tourist mall in downtown Athens, in the shadow of the Parthenon. Lot’s of folks had already checked in there, and that’s where the taxi dropped us. Abby showed Maryann and Nicole to their room, stepped into the suite with Jeffrey, and shut the door. I had hardly slipped through the door to my side room as he took Abby by the shoulders, gently sat her on the edge of the bed, leaning her backward. She slid herself under him, showing off her Victoria’s secrets. He kissed her on the mouth, tickled her - - -
Just then a pounding on the door.
“Abby,
Abby!”
I rushed through the doorway separating my side of the suite from theirs, and blushed at their predicament.
“Just a minute, please,” straightening themselves, opening the door to a fifty-something blonde, streaked red lipstick, robin’s-egg-blue floppy hat with matching blue dress and chiffon robe hanging loose to cover her robust frame, blue shoes with spiked heels.
“They’re here,” she blurted out to us. “After all these years they should leave me alone.”
“Who? The FBI and the CIA again?”
“Of course” she said. They had been tailing her, Abby later explained, ever since she had found out that they had used her as a guinea pig in their drug experiments, lacing her drinks in 1956. She had been hallucinating ever since.
“Calm down, Kay,” Jeff said. “I’m sure it was just someone who looked like them.”
Abby tried to be more comforting.
I gawked. That was when Maryann and Nicole poked their noses through the door.
“We’re going out for dinner and shopping. Do you want to come along?”
“Sure. Are you coming, Kay?” said Abby, glancing apologetically toward Maryann. “We’ll find an ice cream shop.”
“No, thank you. I’ll stay here. I couldn’t eat just now anyway.”
Noticing me.
“A-abby. Is this your friend from Russia? Oh, I just can’t wait to chat. We have so much in common, old friends of Abby from days long ago finally getting to meet here at this wonderful wedding party. Isn’t it such a romantic setting? I was so excited when I opened my invitation; I wouldn’t have missed it. I just wish my husband could have come. He always stays at home. I won’t keep you; go out and have a good time. By-ye.”
Out the door of the Inn at eleven at night we were swept into a river of revelers cruising the strip. The evening was cool and most pleasant as an evening sail. The streets were closed to traffic, which was wonderful. Both sides were lined with shops. Some had jewelry, some trinkets, some clothes, some pottery. Anything a tourist could want. Street vendors with push carts filled in the spaces on the walkways, wherever the regular shopkeepers would allow.
Nicole stopped at a tattoo booth,
“Please, please Daddy. I’ll use my own money,” she pleaded. “Meredith has one.”
Meredith had gotten a tattoo on her back, at the base of her neck.
“Let’s just look,” he said.
And the vendor flipped the pages for them. Dragons for seven dollars, biker tattoos for six, other equally horrible stuff.
“How long do they last?” he asked.
“About three or four days, depending on how much you wash them.”
She settled for a Chinese character on her right shoulder – Love. Jeffrey found that acceptable and nodded OK.
The center was just a half block from the Student’s Inn. A lush garden with fountains lit by colored lights was completely surrounded with restaurants and ice cream parlors, each with an outdoor café. At the opposite corner of the square musicians serenaded diners and that seemed the place to go.
And sitting there as if by plan was Jeffrey’s family and all were introduced. Harold and Janis, and Sara and Aaron. What fun! They had just come back to Athens from a side trip to Thesalonika where there had been a prosperous Jewish community under the Sultan, but in the Holocaust - - -.
Let’s not talk about unhappy things.
Fred and Betsy came strolling up the street and joined in for drinks. That was the first time Harold and Janis had met them, too, which was interesting, having heard the story about the dinner at the diner. Everything was starting out just as Felicia had planned.
We finally collapsed into bed at two in the morning. The luggage hadn’t arrived and we were to leave for the ferry to Sifnos at six thirty. They were much too tired to pick up where they had left off when Kay had knocked. At least, I didn’t hear them. I slept like a stone.
Next morning Abby was up at the crack of dawn. Stuff had arrived at four and she was in the lobby repackaging everything for the ferry ride. It was too heavy to haul upstairs, even for the elevator. One of Sarina and Prakash’s had all of Kathya’s food for the entire month – eighty pounds. She was allergenic and had special foods. The hiking gear and the Powerbars were for the trek in Leh in northern India, and she didn’t need to haul it out to Sifnos. Nor did they need the two suitcases filled with toys for the Indian children. These went into the Student Inn’s storeroom leaving us with only seven between Jeffrey, Maryann, Nicole and myself. A rollaway for each of them, and a backpack for the adults. Hugely full backpacks, though, with table cloths, suits and gowns. Felicia had once been to a Jewish wedding and decided she wanted a chupah, so Jeffrey had made a portable one for her and was carrying that, too. Nicole and Abby each had a different new outfit for each day on Sifnos.
Kay was in quite a cheerful mood, ready with her single bag.
“Oh,” she said. “You were so right.”
“I’m so glad,” said Abby.
“I’m so sorry to have troubled you. You must think I’m such a crazy Kay.”
“Nonsense. It’s fine. We’re happy for you.”
Abby has persistence like a mosquito when she gets something in her mind. And she decided we could all walk to the train, and so we did. Sixteen souls at dawn like leafcutter ants carrying backpacks and pulling roll away suitcases though a kilometer of cobbled streets below the Parthenon were quite a site. The station was a kilometer, plus or minus, so leaving those three bags made a big difference. Still we were loaded like llamas. Just enough to be heavy, but just not enough that we sat down and refused. All just squeezed aboard the subway, except Gramma, who just stood statuesque on the platform until Sarina and Uncle Ikram took her arms and pulled her in. Lucky they did! She’d still be there.
Funny. I hadn’t noticed Ikram before. He was the girls’ Uncle from Amsterdam. Short, bald, a paunch not like a soccer ball but not built for leotards either, a funny nose, coke bottle lenses. He was unpresupposingly professorial.
The sun rose in a clear blue Adriatic sky as we arrived at the ferry dock. The day was glittering, and the boat sparkled, white and clean and andante. An eight-hour ride was just the fix. Unhurried time to relax. We watched as the cars and trucks loaded, then the gates opened for the pedestrian passengers. Four flights of narrow stairs to the main deck with luggage took two trips for the guys. No matter. With a deep blast from the ship’s whistle we were on our way, spread out in small groups and in singles. Some found sunny spots, some shady, some slept on the benches some dug out their books.
I found a chaise in a private nook on the upper deck, unbuttoned my blouse and hiked up my skirt. My thighs were firm from my profession, but they were ‘Petersburg white’ and needed some color. All the way up, like Abby’s.
I awoke some time later. Sifnos was on the horizon and Ikram in a lounge beside me. Embarrassed, I sat with a start.
“That’s a beautiful tie pin,” I said, reaching for the first set of buttons. “Where did you get it?”
“Oh. Why thank you,” he said. “We have many such shops in Amsterdam.”
I smoothed my dress, covering my knees.
“Then you must be quite an expert on diamonds, living there.”
“Oh, hardly that. This was a gift from my daughter.”
“And that one in your ear?”
I finished the rest of the buttons.
“From my wife, may she rest in peace.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He stood to indicate the approaching port.
“I see it’s time to gather our things. Shall we join the others?”
I stood and fixed my hairpin.
“Let’s go.”
~
The port town was called Kamares. On the right side of the one road was a row of buildings housing the travel agents, a few grimy restaurants, a gas pump, the car rentals, and a few wooden houses up some gravel side streets. Hardly Shangri La. To the left a wide sidewalk and a beach. A blue and white bus loaded passengers and labored off, up the hill.
“Don’t worry,” Abby said. “This looks like Delhi Terminal, but the rest of the island is much, much better. I promise.”
We all sat ourselves on the heap of backpacks while Thom and Jeff went to search for some cars. The sun beat down on our sweating backs. After a while Jefrey and Thom returned.
“Success!” they called out, holding up the keys to a cute red Toyota four seater, and a classic white Jeep with roll bar. Somehow all the gear stacked into the seats, and they waved “Good bye. See you in town!” as they drove away.
Before long we all jammed into the next blue and white, and were on our way to Appolonia, switchbacking up the headwall to the central square on the island.
Thom and Jeff were waiting at the ‘five corners’ nestled into a nook between two hills. On one corner were the tourist info center and the bus station. A cobbled walkway headed left to a residential area. A restaurant was between it and a stairway of worn stones leading up to the town of Pina Petali. Between the stairs and the road was a stationery store, sort of a five and dime. Beside it the main road continued up to Artemonas, where Felicia and Thom were staying. The head of a steep ravine fell away between it and the road down to Kastro, the pebble beach. On our right was a boulangerie. A narrow alleyway tucked between it and a coffee shop with a restaurant on the roof deck. Another alleyway off that one led to our flat.
About a hundred meters in we realized we had missed their turn. Backtracking we found it, and discovered that this, not the paved road, was the main drag of the village. The walkways were scrubbed clean and all the houses were freshly whitewashed stucco, ready for the wave of tourists to crest. Shops, jewelry stores, hotels and restaurants, every wall freshly painted white stucco, polished stone pavers layered into wide stairsteps, a beautiful church on the left, and an iron gate on the right was our entrance. Two young Swedes lounged shirtless in the courtyard in front of their open door, a ten year old ran to fetch Mrs. Nikolata to show us around back to our unit. A narrow walkway hugged the building and a low fence separated us from the drop off to the terraced roofs of the houses below. The unit itself was a simple affair, a first bedroom with a kitchenette slept Mary Ann, Nicole, and me, a second bedroom for Abby and Jeff and Gramma. Not much privacy. And a bath.
On a promontory just by the door was a fixed canopy with a picnic bench, overlooking the town below. The view behind was toward of the barren slopes of Panagia Chrissopigi, the highest point on the island at 1000 meters, with a monastery on top. To the right, the ravine to Platos Yalos. Pina Petali nestled on the opposite hillside, the Pina Petali Hotel lining its crest. That was where Jeffrey’s family was staying.
“Jeff, Nicole and I are going over for tea. Want to come along?” Abby invited me.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The walk down to the five corners was a breeze, but the stairway up the other side was even steeper than ours. Arriving, gasping for breath, we said a quick hello to Ikram and Kay on the deck, and picked out a table for eight. Another spectacular view. Jeffrey went to knock on their door and came back with his Dad and the kids.
“Harold,” Abby said. “How did you get all your luggage up here, and with your knee!”
“We packed light, and Aaron helped,” he smiled. “How do
you like our place.”
What a sweet man. He was so good natured about it, but anyone could see it was
tough.
“Wonderful,” she said. “Look across there. You can see our flat. On the point with the canopy deck. Wave to Gramma.”
“Where’s Mom.”Jeff asked.
“She’ll be right out,” he said. “She was looking for that stick pin she likes. The alligator with the diamond eyes.”
“A problem?”
“Oh no,” he said. “She had it this morning. Here she comes now.”
It was about five centimeters long, an three across, emerald toenails, ruby spines on its back and tail, and yes, diamond eyes. I winked at Ik, and he winked back.
Tea came. We sipped, chatted, and went off to find Felicia and Thom at the windmill.
The place was adorable. It was one of a cluster of windmills perched on the shoulder of the hill overlooking the bay a thousand feet below. Up a few stone stairsteps to a terrace the breezes cooled the heat of the day. The hillside was a mix of scrub grasses, flowering thorn bushes and rocks, a mix of earthy greens and browns. Like a ribbon, a road found its way down a ravine to a harbor below. The deep blue of the water was streaked with whitecaps as the seabreeze freshened. A few sailboats dotted the straight, and the ghost of an island faded into the haze on the horizon. The inside of the windmill was fitted with a circular stairway, a lounge downstairs, the bedroom loft above, the sheets rumpled.
Love was something I had missed in life. Too much risk. I’d even made my art safe, defined by the choreographer. Jeffrey exposed himself more in his sculpture than I did in dance. Someday I would let myself be really seen, vulnerable. Then I’d fall in love.
That night I dreamt.
~
A bright sunny morning on our island, our fantasy world, wondering how to spend the time, walking up the stairway to the suite I found Gramma as usual on the patio.
“Where’s Jeff?” I asked her.
“Oh dear. I thought he went to the beach with you and Abby.”
“No, I just came back.”
“I don’t know very much, but he did have his towel.”
Strange. He hadn’t shown an interest in the beach. His plans were to do some woodworking project while Abby, Nicole and I went to the beaches. And suddenly he was off on his own with sunbathing in mind.
“Just his towel?”
“That’s alI I saw,” she said.
I slipped off my two piece, threw on a light cotton shift and headed out the door. I was going to Vathy, the most remote village, a sheltered horseshoe bay surrounded by tall hills, accessible by rough track from Apollonia and Platis Yialos, or by boat from Kamares. There is a pottery, a couple of taverns and a nude beach.
I parked where I saw the other cars got out and slammed the door.
The noise that woke me wasn’t a car door. It was a vendor bouncing his breakfast cart down the stairway to the town square. I stretched, and decided it was a beach day. Felicia’s plan, everyone should get to know everyone. One day at the beach, one day at the pool. Thom’s jeep crowded with passengers, or Jeff’s red Subaru. But Gramma never came to the beaches. She was perfectly content sitting on the balcony every day, looking over the valley. Just as I had seen her in my dream.
I strolled into the apartment, Gramma on her perch, reading, Jeff in the kitchen hunched over a table, surrounded by little pieces of wood.
“Not at the beach today?” I asked.
“I swam and came home,” he answered.
I leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look. He had a cream colored piece of veneer taped to a piece of plywood and he was using a wallpaper knife to cut a hole in it. The hole he was cutting had the shape of the state of Florida
“It’s hot, you should have stayed.”
It was the kind of wallpapering knife with the snap off blades.
“Uh-huh.”
“Why is Florida backwards?” I asked. His drawing had a space ship on the ‘west’ coast and the panhandle pointing ‘east.’ A flamingo on the bottom and a dolphin out to sea.
He snapped off a section blade to get a new, sharp point.
“Wait,” he said, and finished cutting out the profile.
“It’s called the ‘window’ technique.” He picked up a piece of veneer with a wild, green swirl and slid it behind the hole he had made.
“This is the glue side. I’ll cut out the state from this poplar burl veneer by tracing through the hole, and it will fit perfectly.” He shifted it around looking through the opening, picking the grain pattern he liked. “I’ll tape it into place from the finish side, and when I glue it onto a backing it’ll reverse itself and come out right. That way my mistakes get buried in the glue, and the joints that show are tight.”
He had eight of these marquetry pictures to make. They were going on the eight sides of the pediments of two fluted columns for the entryway to the children’s area of a library in Tampa. The columns were to be bridged by an ‘arts and crafts’ style lintel, with a panther reclining on top of it, gazing down at the children like the Cheshire cat. One panel was math formulas, another books, another a telescope, four others.
“Behind the eight ball?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I just had this idea to make myself a shoebox marquetry kit and take along something to do. So I felt less sad at leaving.”
He popped Florida into place, flipped it over, inspected the joint and held it up for me to see. Perfect.
What kind of guy, I wondered, takes a month long vacation to Greece and India for his step daughter’s wedding and feels sad at leaving his work, so he brings it along to keep from being bored?
He tore some tape from the roll, licked it and pasted the pieces together.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Abby says the same, but if anyone understood it, it would be you. You gave up a lot. You’re an ex-pat living in Russia. You went there to dance.”
He swept the larger scraps into his shoebox.
“You’re single and childless even though you’re attractive. Why didn’t you fall in love? Something holding you back?”
Putting away the rest of his tools.
“Thanks for the compliment,” I said.
Such honesty I could do without.
“Listen,” he said stopping from his business, turning to me straight. “Before we were married I came across a short story. It was about a writer who lamented that he lost a chapter in his novel every time he had sex. I showed it to Abby, and she didn’t like it.”
I marveled at that one.
And wondered.
What if I had more sex and less dance?
Stayed stateside. Met a guy. Changed diapers.
Gone to PTA. Shuttled to soccer. Burnt store bought pizza.
Been happier?
“Neither do I,” I said.
And what about him? Was he for real? Was it such a crime to sit on the beach and soak sun, relax for awhile, instead of always doing? Was he content? Gramma could sit on her veranda looking out over the valley, happy just to be there. Was she content? Had she been happy in the Garland House on Mill Road, drafty doors, unheated bedrooms, hardly upgraded since it was built by her ancestor Garland in 1889. Three daughters like sirens, Abby the middle and sickly one. Now look at her, the healthiest, except for the asthma.
~
The beach was a half mile walk. Privacy, you know. Soon I was on the sand, and sure enough everyone was stark naked, except for me. Some of the women lay on their bellies, showing only their backs and buttocks. Others, the more carefree, were shamelessly spread eagled. Some had rings in their nipples, others pearls in their navels. Diamonds in the kinkier places. But this was nudism. This was not supposed to be sexy and I have to admit, the guys were all soft.
After a ways I found him, basking in the sun. I had observed his exhibitionist side but this was taking it too far. What if Felicia or Sarina had come by? They are his daughters, and even he would have been embarrassed by that. Didn’t he get it?
Realizing that I wasn’t in a position to do or say much, on a fool’s errand, the only person in sight wearing a shred of clothing, feeling as if I was the one who was naked. I stayed cool, and decided to work on the Saint Pete’s white. Kay was lounging further down the sand. I noticed a portolet and excused myself. I had to go. Inside I slipped my undies into my pocket.
When I woke next morning Abby was alone in the house, still in her nighty, making the flower arrangements for the bachelorette party. I draped myself across a chair, and watched her work her magic. I don’t know much about flowers, but she was happy as a frog on a lily pad. Picking one, then another placing each just so. I envied her just a bit. A large white flower gave her pleasure my toe shoes had lost somewhere along the way.
“Your nightgown is getting old, Abby,” I said. “Why don’t you stop in a shop and get a new one?”
“I feel loyalty to my clothes.” she said.
“Thin is what I meant. I think it’s getting thin.”
Transparent is what I meant. Hid nothing. Thin white cotton. Frayed like the velveteen rabbit.
“I’ve had it since we were married. Thirteen years.”
I stretched my legs in front of me. Pointed and flexed my toes.
“How does Jeff get along with your kids?” I changed the subject.
She pushed a stem into the vase.
“Fine,” she said.
“Really, tell me.”
She picked up the bouquet, looked it over, looked at me, thoughtfully.
“Like this,” she said. “When they were in college, sometimes my kids needed to borrow his truck, and he always said ‘OK.’ When Felicia borrowed it she brought it back with a full tank of gas. When Sarina borrowed it, she brought it back with as much as she found, and Salim returned it empty. Understand?”
“Sort of.”
She took a couple of glasses from the cupboard, went to the fridge and poured two glasses if iced tea.
“How did you meet him?”
She sat in the opposite chair.
“At a meeting of a ski club, in Portsmouth. He was running a cross country ski trip to a cabin in the woods. I thought he was cute so I signed up.”
“That’s it? No more to tell?”
“Well, I saw him in his long johns, climbing down from a top bunk in the middle of the night, and he had cute legs. But I was 40 and he was 32, and when I found out he was Jewish I thought he would never marry me. Three teens, you know. Four years later his Rabbi gave his blessing, and we were on our way. A civil ceremony we wrote ourselves. At a historic inn in upstate New Hampshire, The Notchland. Remember it?”
“Stone building?”
That’s it. Just the family with us, and four llamas in the barn. We took them for a walk.”
I drank my tea. Abby sipped hers.
“Is he good in bed?” I dared ask.
She got up from her seat and plucked a flower from the arrangement, looked at it and brushed off a dried leaf. Turning it round in her fingers she found the most attractive side, and placed it back, just so.
“OK,” she said, leaning over her work. “He’s fine.”
Her breasts swung free as she leaned over the arrangement.
Two happy goldfish. Nipples, pursed lips, waiting to be kissed. When was the last time mine had been kissed? My thighs tickled. Tasted. Tongued. Too long.
I thought about that first evening. Her embarrassment, his little smile. I’d like that. Just ‘OK,’ she says. It must be wonderful, I mused. How would a new man be? Someone to take pleasure from my pleasure. On this isle of weddings and romance.
~
Coming out of the bath house, I walked over to where Jeff had settled in, passing Kay on the way.
I said “Hello,” and he just looked. Very cool.
“Do you come here often?” I asked, wiping droplets from my neck. He began to stir, the sun behind me projecting my shadow onto my sundress like a movie on a screen.
“First time,” he said, offering a hanky. “Are you hot?”
“Not too.”
I reached down for the hem of my sundress.
“Just dripping a little.”
Slowly, in one fluid motion I lifted it over my head.
~
The night of the bachelorette party I was free, happily to enjoy a chance to wander the alleys and dream. A dark Greek sailor, muscular arms, wavy hair greased back, a bulge in his pants.
The night air was cool as I headed down the stairs to town. People were out and about, shopping, eating. I poked my nose into one shop with handmade jewelry and bought some earrings. Silver with sapphire stones. There was a cute little shop where I bought a set of blue and white Sifnos napkins. There was a pharmacy that I went in to buy Dramamine because I was going back on the speedboat. I was afraid of a bumpy ride. There was a shop that sold vases and I bought a little brown souvenir sized urn. It was cone shaped with a flat bottom, a cork in the spout, and Greek Gods with large erections painted in umber tones. There was a florist up a set of stairs and I bought a bouquet for the apartment. A bakery had some nice looking mince pies, and I made a note to tell Abby about it. I bought a crème colored blouse with Greek pale blue embroidery on the shoulders. It fit like Britney Spears. Well, it would have if I had her portobellos instead of my shiitakes. But I wore it. What the hell, I was out for the evening to myself and I could dream. That I could. I wandered down a side alley, rested my chin in my hands, elbows on a stone wall in a spot with a view. What were these dreams I was having about disrobing on nude beaches? Just neurons firing, or did they have meaning? Here’s a riddle. What does it mean, Joe. Seven asparagus spears poking out of the ground, followed by seven morning glories. The tendrils of the morning glories wrap themselves around the asparagus stalks, and they go limp. The interpretation - time to eat.
I settled on the restaurant with the nicest view I could find. It was down a side alley branching off from the stairway, between several houses. A split-level restaurant perched on the housetops. My table was down a few steps to the roof of the house below, overlooking the slope down to the sea, lights from harbor markers and sailboats in the water, and the islands to the east catching the last of the setting sun. The menu, squid, squid, squid, squid squidsquidsquid, kalamari, and squid. It was the same everywhere, so I set the flowers beside the candle on the table, and ordered the squid.
Ikram caught my eye from the top of the steps. Nodding for him to join me,
“Hello, Ikram,” I said, folding my arms, leaning back in my seat. “Care to join me?”
He showed his sweet little smile, as the waiter brought him a chair.
“I must apologize,” he said to me. “It’s been several days now we’ve been travelling together, and I haven’t caught your name.”
He ordered wine and salad. No squid.
“Vanessa,” I said. “It’s quite alright.”
“It’s a lovely name,” he said. “Like Felicia has a lovely name.”
“Felicia is a lovely girl. I don’t think there is any comparison.”
“Quite the contrary,” he said. “Didn’t Abby tell me you were a dancer in Saint Petersburg. That’s very charming.”
Where was this going? I wondered. Should I tell him about bloody toes and asshole choreographers? I had gone to school there hoping for a break, but never made it to the top.
“An old dancer now. Have you got your speeches ready?”
The waiter opened the wine and poured Ikram a splash.
“I find you very interesting,” he ignored me. At least, he ignored my question. “Why did you never go back to America? You’re single. You could dance in New York.”
“No, not any more.”
“Then you could teach. You’ve danced in Russia.”
“I don’t have family. Just a brother and we were never close. He’s much older. An aunt, a few cousins, also much older.”
“And there?”
“Some friends. Routine. Habit, I guess.”
“Vanessa, I am disappointed. You are not helping me understand.”
Wow, I thought to myself. I was indeed keeping things close. But here’s this man, not so pretty, but regarding me well. He’s asked my name and made me less a stranger. The ocean fragrance on the breeze was like the Cote d’Azure where Abby and I had spent a summer all those long years ago, at the Chateau d’lana Poule. A friend of hers back in Portsmouth had inherited it from an eccentric uncle. It was in terrible disrepair, and each summer they took a team of students over to work on the grounds in exchange for room and board. The castle was a small walled city with stairways, gardens and balconies clustered together, and it stood on the bluff overlooking the Mediterranean, with sailboats on the horizon just like in Sifnos. That’s where I met Pieter, who eventually took me to Saint Petersburg. He was a client at the inn. On Bastille Day we all climbed the tower to watch the fireworks. They were real close and the sparks came down on the balcony where we stood watching, and that’s when he asked me to his room.
“Come at midnight,” he had said.
I asked “Why,” and immediately felt dumb. I knew why.
“I was thinking you could stay the night,” he said, and I told him I would have to decide, and he said he would wait for me.
He wore a white robe when he answered the door, a pattern in stripes embossed onto silk. He stood aside and beckoned me in.
“Would you like a cup of wine, or are you tired now?” he asked, putting a hand on each of my hips. I undid his waistband to see what kind of fish I had caught.
“I think it’s bedtime,” I said.
What was it that made some love work and others fall apart? A high school friend once told me she had asked her Mom how to make a happy marriage. Was it pretty much a fifty fifty deal? She had asked and she told me her Mom’s answer. She had said “No, dear. You both have to give one hundred percent.”
That’s how it wasn’t for us, but my sense was right Felicia and Thom, Fishatom as Abby would say. They would do just fine. He adored her and wanted so badly for her to be happy. She had energy and seemed determined to spread her self around the world like butter on bread. I just hoped she would have some left to bring home. Thom didn’t seem like a high ego guy, but Pieter had hated any success I had, felt put down by it, the self confident air swept aside like a curtain from a wizard.
I wasn’t ready to tell Ikram all that, but I did want to open up at least a little.
”When I was a girl,” I said, “maybe eight, I had a dream that I was a bird. A white bird, but it was a goose. A white goose. I floated into the air, and I felt the rush of it lifting me. Wind blowing me wherever. That was my dream. I had it several times. And that’s the whole dream. So I told my Mom I wanted to dance, and I did, and when I did, I got that same feeling. Purity. Harmony. Things I didn’t feel other times. But geese, you know. Geese fly a long way when winter comes. My parents were quite senior, and they both died while I was in college. Nothing tragic or sudden. Just, winter. So I guess my dream had another meaning. Yes?”
“Enough about me, Ikky. You didn’t answer my question.”
Actually my Mom got religion and took off when my brother and I were a teen, my Dad was a plumber and he worked hard to get us by, living in a trailer park. We were smart and got scholarships, and his emphysema caught up with him. I didn’t mention this either.
“Which?”
About your wedding speech. Are you ready for it?”
“Oh, that question. Actually, I do have more thoughts to find. It is a very unusual situation?”
He paused to let the waiter set out our meals.
“They will be married on the porch of an Orthodox church and they are not Orthodox; the groom’s sister is to sing Gregorian chant and they are not Catholic, they will stand under a Hooper and they are not Jewish, and I, a Muslim am to do the ceremony and they are not Muslim.”
“Chupah,” I corrected him, being careful to gurgle the saliva on the back of her throat. “Chhh. Like in German.”
“Choopah,” he tried.
“Listen,” I said. “If you are going to make a mistake, hoopah is better than choopah. So, what are you going to say?”
“I am going to sing some chants in Arabic and say a few words about love and family. They have assigned readings to members of the family.”
“Yes?” I leaned forward, to show my interest.
“Tell me. What just exactly is a hoopah?”
I laughed. He seemed almost cute just then. Childlike.
“I really couldn’t say. I think you’ll have to ask Jeffrey, or Abby.”
“You must tell me. Abby is very busy.”
“OK, listen. I was at a Jewish wedding. It was outside on a misty day with a chill breeze blowing off a lake. The Rabbi was a jolly elf type guy, curly blonde hair, and gay. And he said the chupah was like a house, see. A home. Friends and family hold up the corners, love from outside. The love of the couple holds it up from inside. The roof, it’s like a prayer shawl. Love from above. Three kinds of love. Say that, but use more words.”
I ate my squid, he his salad with olives.
We had ice cream for dessert.
~
On the way home, about ten thirty, walking up the stairs to the flat I passed The Appolonia and remembered that the younger set was scheduled for a late night of drinking in the pub. I stopped in to find Abby at a table with Felicia and a friend and pulled up a chair.
“Let me introduce you,”Abby offered. “This is Jacqueline from Paris.”
Late thirties, wavy reddish hair, mole on her cheek.
“Hello, Jacqueline. Vanessa,” I helped out.
“Pleased,” she said. Dragged on her cigarette.
“How do you know Felicia.”
Jacqueline exhaled.
“I own a condo in a converted mansion, on Arlington Street. She answered a roommate wanted ad in the Boston Herald.”
“And she moved in?”
“We lived together for a couple years until I started dating Salim, and she went to Beijing and I went to Paris.”
“I see him with someone else now.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I’ll be a spinster. I’m OK with that.”
“Likewise. And your apartment?”
“It’s rented. Do you have the time?”
“Sure, it’s a bit more than half ten.”
“Could you excuse me. There’s this yummy jeweler closes his shop at eleven. I gotta go.”
“Sure, bon nuit.”
“See that girl at the bar,” said Felicia. “She was my roommate in college. Natalie.”
She had a down to earth look, nice skin, light colored
hair in a long pony tail. Prettier than Jacki. “She came the farthest. From
Beijing.”
“You were in Beijing for a while, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but not at the same time. Natalie is really special to me. The kind of person who just does. Know what I mean?”
“Go on.”
“Well, she just went and bought a farm in Brazil and moved and learned Portuguese. I visited her there. After a while she decided to learn Chinese and moved to Beijing.”
She pointed to a corner table.
“That’s Sue Potter, from Australia. She and I met at my school in France.”
I turned to look.
A dark haired girl with bangs in front, the rest hanging straight to neck length, and a loose blue skirt. A bit short.
“What school was that?”
“La Sabraneque, near Avignon. It was an immersion school, and we weren’t allowed to speak English for four months, except when Mummy and Jeff and Sarina and Nicole visited. We broke the rule.”
“It was like that for me in Russia. You learn fast.”
“You do. Then I went to Sue’s wedding in Oz in 1990, then we met again when she had work in Beijing.”
“Popular place.”
“Yeah, but she came to New Hampshire, too, for a birthday hike with Jeff and Mumph and Thom and I in 1999. We hiked Mt. Major, her husband Andrew was at the hike, but he’s not here now.”
That brought some flashbacks.
“My word,” I said. “Abby do you remember going to Mount Major with the UNH Outing Club.”
“Those were the days,” she said.
“Do you still go there?”
“All the time. Summer, winter, on skis, at night, with Nicole, without Nicole.”
Memories like flutterbyes.
Sue was sitting with a handsome looking couple.
“Who are they?” indicating with a tilt of the head.
“That’s Tom and Leslie. I worked with them at Lucent, in Andover. They are getting married in Portsmouth next fall.”
“Lucent?”
“That was my company that sent me to China. An AT&T spin-off. I set up the technical support system for the telecommunications system we installed.”
“And now? Do you still work for them?
“Not any more. I just got a graduate degree from the
Kennedy School of Government.”
“They offered her tons of money to come back, and the whole Latin American
region for a territory, but she turned them down,” said Abby.
“That’s brave,” I said. “Why not get what you deserve? You’re a Harvard grad? “
“I wanted to contribute more directly to positive social change and human development.”
“You get credit there.”
Standing by the window, an angular woman posed like one of Toulouse Lautrec’s models, leaning on her elbow on the window sill. Hair in a flip, high cheekbones and a large nose made her attractive but not pretty.
“Who’s that talking with Sarina? I asked.
“That’s Marian. It was her wedding, to Yurgos, that gave the idea to come here.”
“When was that?”
“Two years ago. Sarina and I stayed at Hotel Sifnos with all the Marian's friends. We liked it because it was very central and we would meet each day leisurely for coffee and decide which beach to go to. It was also a central spot and good to meet in the evenings. The owner was super nice, he remembered Thom and I when we came back last spring -- everything was still boarded up and closed, but he happened to just pull in and was coming from his first swim of the season off the cliffs of Kastro. Hmmm, we thought and unbuttoned our fleece. He brought us to a neighbors cafe and bought us a drink and told us about how we could plan a wedding -- basically set us at ease and told us in his Greek way that everybody would help and it would be no problem. I told him then that I'd like to book all of his rooms and that’s how it happened.”
Abby beckoned to a woman just arriving. Brown hair to her chin, a larger version of Jane Pauley. Cute face on a large person, self assured air.
“Katherine, come sit with us.”
“Who do we have here?” she said in greeting. A Brit if I ever heard one.
“Mumphy’s friend from UNH and Saint Pete.”
“Vanessa,” I helped out. “Were you in Beijing with Felicia?”
“Indeed, I was,” she said. “Twice.”
“And what brought you to Beijing?’
“BBC.”
I was right. About Jane Pauley, that is.
“BBC? Your kidding. Is that you on the radio? World Service?”
“Not me. That’s my friend, Vicki. I do food.”
“Too bad.”
“Not at all. I like reporting on food. I meet lots of fancy people that way.”
“That’s how we met,” Felicia added. “At a crepe pancake tea.”
“Is that something you eat or something you drink?”
“It’s a brunch where you eat crepe pancakes and sip tea.”
“At my flat in Beijing.”
Abby asked “Were you part of the ‘hash hash’ runners?”
“Hash House Harriers,” Felicia corrected.
“No, that was Colleen. Over there with the light brown hair,” indicating a delicate, demur young lady. “She’s playing violin at the wedding.”
“Katherine came back to visit when I worked in Beijing in 1998 and we went to Xiahe -- in the Tibetan region. She has visited in the US multiple times.”
“I came with me Mum, and we went with Felicia and Abby and Jeffrey to their lovely cottage, in Vermont.”
“How is your mother?” Abby asked.
“Still a bit wacko, but otherwise quite well.”
“Does she still have our cousin Liz’s cookbook?”
“I have it, but I never did make that feature on her. Sorry. Broke my promise, didn’t I.”
Just then the waitresses emerged from the kitchen carrying three round tables full of layer cakes, and set them up in the middle of the room. It was 11 o’clock and cake tasting time. We got two slices of every type of cake and then voted! We chose the tastiest one - a strawberry whip crème vanilla cake for the bottom layer -- the 4th and largest layer, and a chocolate layer for the 2nd layer cause it was so good. I think the third layer was chocolate, too. And that’s what we ordered for the wedding.
I couldn’t party anymore after that. The night had been busy, shopping, my dinner with Ikram, introductions in the pub, cake. Time to sleep.