“No, we are not married. Yes, we live together. Lena, where are you staying? I know it’s late, but do you mind if I come by? I’d really like to talk to you in person.”
She knew exactly what he wanted to talk to her about and she didn’t want to listen. Somewhere his own words were probably ringing in his head, the words he’d said to her more than ten years before, after he’d shocked and devastated her by getting married to Mariana less than a month after he’d promised to love Lena forever. I love you. I’ll never stop. I never will.
He probably felt bad about hurting her now, just as he’d felt bad about it then. He must have seen by her face how she felt. She’d tried to hide it, but she’d never been good at that. Especially not around him. At least she hadn’t collapsed this time.
This time. How many times could you let one man break your heart? What was the matter with her? And if she was being honest with herself she also had to ask, how many times had she broken his?
He was going to try to ease this painful reality on her, make a few excuses, attempt to salvage her pride and preserve their old friendship. He wanted to continue to feel good about himself. Not cause Valia to roll over in her grave.
But seeing him wouldn’t help anything. Not for Lena anyway. It would only make everything worse.
“Just tell me where you are and I will come.”
God knew she wasn’t going to tell him where she was staying. That she was too poor and delusional to have booked a hotel. “You’ve got a life, Kostos, and I respect that. I should have called before I came. I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“Please, Lena? Please tell me where you are. I need to see you.” His voice sounded strange, distorted. She wondered if he’d been drinking with “Harriet” on their big night out.
She realized that the reason her throat ached so badly was because she was going to cry. She was grateful that he couldn’t see. That nobody could see, except the janitor rolling her mop and bucket out of the women’s room.
“I can’t. I don’t want to. I made a mistake by coming here.”
“Lena, you didn’t. If you would just give me a chance.”
“I can’t,” she said again. She needed badly to blow her nose. She hoped he couldn’t hear the wetness of tears and mucus.
He was silent for a moment. “Can I call you again? Tomorrow?”
She closed her eyes and willed her voice not to sound as wet and sad as it felt. “Please don’t.”
“But you don’t understand anything.”
She wished she could hold herself back, but she couldn’t. She was crying hard, and he was going to know it. “Understand what? There’s nothing you can say that changes anything.”
They were both quiet for a moment. She held the phone away until she could pull herself together.
When he spoke again he sounded subdued. She had observed this transition in him before. His voice had flattened. “All right. If you don’t want me to, I won’t.”
She was scared to say anything. She stayed quiet.
“So what about this letter?” he said, clearly perplexed by it and its origin.
She tried to even out her breathing. “It’s from Tibby. I don’t know what it says. She left one just like it for me too. She left me instructions to deliver yours to you in person.”
“I see,” he said. “I guess that explains it.” It was that flat voice.
Lena wasn’t sure what it explained, and she didn’t have the wherewithal to ask.
“Are we supposed to be together when we open them, or something like that?” he asked. She wasn’t sure if his voice sounded mocking.
“No, that wasn’t part of it.”
“It says on the back I’m not supposed to open it until the middle of March.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s what mine says too.”
The angels come to visit us,
and we only know them
when they are gone.
—George Eliot
Carmen had never dreaded an audition before. Usually she went with a kick of her expensive heels and a kind of ferocity in her heart. I’ll show them a thing or two, she would think, with all the delusional verve of an only child. If she didn’t get the role, they didn’t get her. That was that. But she felt sober and wary when she thought of this one.
“The wedding is on April seventeenth. How can I possibly get everything ready if I’m in New Orleans at the end of March for a week and a half?” she complained to Jones from the bathroom a few evenings later as she slogged through the removal of her makeup.
“You’ll have your phone. You can do it from there.” She noticed he didn’t offer to do it himself.
“What about tasting the menu? What about trying on the dress? I can’t do that from there.”
Jones was trying to read something in bed and not savoring her pouty diatribes. “Listen,” he said finally. “You need to concentrate on this meeting. I’m serious. You need to get your head into it. If you want to postpone the wedding for a month or two, we can do that.”
Carmen looked down at the cotton ball blackened with stuff from her eyes. Jones wouldn’t have wanted to postpone the wedding for her grandmother, but he instantly tossed it aside for an audition. Grant Arden was a lot more important in his world than Big Carmen.
Did she want to postpone it? Or did she just want to get it over with? If she rushed into the wedding headlong, she wouldn’t have to think very much. Things like what to do about Tibby’s family, whether to involve bridesmaids or just blindly skip that whole morass, those questions could be largely avoided. Thoughts like God, Carmen, what in the world are you doing? could be politely stepped over on her way up the aisle. It was a built-in excuse for herself and everyone else—We just slapped it together. Maybe it was even an excuse in case she needed one later. We probably should have taken more time with it. She could almost hear herself five years in the future saying it.
“How’d you two do?” Brian asked at the end of the first day when he emerged from his office and found Bridget and Bailey exhausted at the kitchen table.
Bridget shrugged. “Pretty good. I don’t know.” She looked at Bailey. “How’d we do?”
Bailey copied Bridget’s shrug.
Brian looked Bailey over carefully and kissed her pink ear. “Usually we change out of pajamas at some point in the day. And sunscreen is always a plus. But otherwise she looks good, I think.”
Bailey was eager to be back in her father’s arms and put to bed right after dinner. Bridget slept a longer and more innocent sleep than she had in a long time.
In the morning, Bee and Bailey carried their breakfast outside, and both screamed in delight when a yellow bird flew down and landed on the edge of Bailey’s cereal bowl and ate a Cheerio. They talked about it for the rest of the day.
They played for a couple of hours at the creek. They found a garter snake and taunted it with sticks. They tried to get it to eat a Cheerio, but it wouldn’t. Bridget felt the old childlike brutishness rising in her again.
In the heat of the afternoon they lay on their stomachs on the front porch and scribbled with crayons. This was exactly as far as Bridget’s artistic talent had ever taken her, and she was satisfied with it.
Listening to the sticky click of the crayons going on and off the paper, breathing in that old waxy smell, Bridget realized she was enjoying herself.
She realized this job suited her in unexpected ways. It was like temping, in that each day contained different activities, so you didn’t feel too tied down. It was better than temping in that you got to be outside and wear your oldest, dirtiest clothes. It was better than temping in that you got to follow your own ideas, and whatever you might say about toddlers, a two-year-old boss was a lot easier to please and impress than a representative from human resources.
Idly Bridget wondered what you needed to do to qualify for such a job and how much it paid by the hour.
Lena sold the house the third day she was in Greece. She called four different br
okers the first day, cleaned like a madwoman the second day, and hosted an open house the third day, and by five o’clock she had accepted an offer for the place, furniture and all. The fourth day she signed papers, went to the bank, and faxed documents to her father. The fifth day she met with the moving company and worked alongside them boxing up papers, books, and personal effects to be shipped back to her parents in the States. She was astonished by the efficiency of it all.
On the sixth day she woke up without a project. She woke up in a cleaned-out house that didn’t really belong to her anymore, in a bed she couldn’t seem to get out of. She lay there and watched the sunlight creep over her blanket. She didn’t have a message to deliver in Tibby’s name anymore. She didn’t have a house to sell anymore. She didn’t have a man to contemplate a life with anymore.
She had … what did she have? She had large feet. She had self-pity. She had an ingrown toenail on her left big toe. She had four days until she could get on a flight back to the States.
She stayed in bed until after noon. She made herself an omelet. She sat cross-legged on the floor of Valia’s closet for a while. Then she got up and looked through the last of the clothes in her grandmother’s closet, the ones destined for the garbage. She tried on Valia’s pink cotton bathrobe and then her Pucci-style housedress. She put both of them in her suitcase.
Her bapi had died long ago. Most of his stuff had been cleaned out and given away years before. But when she wandered into his closet she found a pair of silver cuff links in the shape of lions in the back of a drawer. She also saw, still pinned to the wall, two small drawings she had made that first summer, one of a church in the village and another of the fishing boats in Ammoudi. She remembered showing them to Bapi when she’d first made them, and his wordless appreciation. She’d left them in her room when she’d gone back to the States. It felt self-important or presumptuous of her to have given them to him, but she was moved that he had liked them enough to keep them and hang them in his closet. She was moved at the idea that he would have looked at them and thought of her when she wasn’t there.
She sat on the windowsill of her bedroom and looked out at the sparkling blue water of the Caldera. The lost city of Atlantis was supposed to be under there. She imagined Tibby under there. She imagined the Traveling Pants under there. She imagined the ring that Kostos had bought for her when he still thought he loved her under there.
Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn’t get to have.
Later in the week, after a few morning hours in the creek, Bridget and Bailey found a bunch of wooden boards in the shed and tried to construct a tree house in a bush. After an hour it collapsed, which seemed to both of them much more entertaining than its staying intact. They built it again and again, shoddier each time, and laughed when it fell down.
That same evening, Brian worked late, and after dinner Bridget and Bailey went out to the back steps to watch the last of the sun fading away and the sky turning dark. They saw two bats, and then in the gloaming, the first zap of a firefly. Bridget shouted like a two-year-old and pointed. “Lightning bug! Did you see it? The light flash in the air?”
Bailey watched the air with suspicion and interest. Bridget could see her trying the words out in her mouth before she said them aloud. Even at this tiny age she was like her mother in not wanting to get out in front of something before she had a feel for it.
“Let’s get a jar and we’ll catch one,” Bridget said excitedly. She ran into the kitchen with Bailey following. She found a glass jar on a high shelf. Bailey watched in wonder as she jammed a few holes in the lid with the point of a sharp knife. Bridget vaguely wondered how many decent knives she’d ruined over the years in this enterprise.
Bailey followed her back out to the yard. Standing on the grass in the falling dark, Bailey looked tentative. Bridget wondered if she’d been outside at night much.
“Let’s pick a few blades of grass and put them in the jar to make it a nice home for when we catch one,” she said ambitiously. “Here, like this.” She plucked a blade of grass, unscrewed the lid, and put it in the jar.
This Bailey could do. She leaned down and plucked the blades one at a time and carefully put each one in the jar. It was hard to get her to stop.
“I see one,” Bridget said. “Look.” She pointed there and there and there. Bailey stood frozen in her white pajamas and bare feet in the middle of the grass. Her eyes were large and attentive.
“Watch this,” Bridget said, putting the jar down. She chased a bug and grabbed it out of the air with cupped hands. She brought it back to Bailey, kneeled down, and opened her hands slowly. Bailey was eager to see but didn’t want to get too close. “See it?” Bridget said when the bug’s posterior lit up.
“See it,” Bailey said, awed.
Bridget let it go and Bailey followed it with her eyes. Then Bailey started jumping around. “Catch! Catch!” she yelled.
Bridget ran around the lawn. Bailey ran around too, but in aimless excitement. “Got it!” Bridget cried when she caught another one.
Bailey rushed over. This time she peered down very close and made a little scream when it flashed.
“We could let it go or put it in the jar.” She pointed to the jar lying on the grass.
Bailey made an excited mangle of sounds ending with “jar.”
Bridget wasn’t sure Bailey knew what it meant. Kneeling down so Bailey could see, she trapped the bug in one closed hand and opened the jar with the other hand while holding it between her knees. She opened her closed hand onto the top of the jar and held it flat until the bug flew in. She could hear Bailey breathing. “Now, quick, you put the lid back on so the bug doesn’t fly out.”
Once the lid was screwed shut Bridget handed the jar to Bailey. Bailey held it with two hands and gasped and dropped it as soon as the bug lit up. Bridget laughed and picked it up off the grass. She put it back in Bailey’s eager hands.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
Bailey stared into the jar and then looked up at Bridget. “Again?”
“You want me to catch another one?” Bailey nodded.
“Okay. You can try to catch one too.”
Bailey was loath to let the jar go for the sake of catching, but finally relented. They both ran around the grass. Bailey flailed at the sky with cupped hands in rough imitation of Bridget.
As soon as Bridget caught and captured another one in the jar, Bailey looked at her greedily. “Again?”
“Another one?”
“Other one!”
They kept at it until there were nine lightning bugs in the jar. Bridget found it so thrilling that it was hard to stop, and Bailey was relentless.
“It’ll get too crowded,” Bridget finally said, laughing.
“Other one!” Bailey shouted.
“Too many in there. They might get in a fight.”
Bailey paused and looked interested in that.
“They might bite each other.”
Bailey looked concerned.
“No, I’m just kidding. They don’t bite.”
“No bite,” Bailey proclaimed, snapping her jaws together.
“No bite.”
Brian came out onto the back steps. “What are you doing out there?” he called.
Bailey went rushing for the steps, nearly hyperventilating in her eagerness to show her dad the bugs and the jar.
Bridget smiled and stood around, a little awkward about her own zeal, but proud at having caused the excitement and pleasure.
Bailey’s words collapsed into such an eager muddle you couldn’t understand one thing she was saying, but the blinking jar spoke for itself.
“Wow,” Brian kept saying, carrying her into the house as she held the jar, still sputtering with her story. “Wow. Wow.”
Bridget cleaned up the kitchen with a feeling of satisfaction, listening to Brian calming Bailey dow
n and putting her to bed.
Yawning on her own way to bed an hour or two later, Bridget stopped at Bailey’s bedroom and opened the door very quietly. She walked a few steps into the room and smiled to herself at the sight of Bailey in her crib, still clutching the lightning-bug jar, and the bugs still flashing faintly between her arms.
Bridget hoped for another long innocent night of sleep, but it didn’t come. The longer she lay in the little twin bed in the extra room of this house that had been Tibby’s house, the more agitated she felt. There were so many obvious sources for this feeling, she didn’t feel any desire to dig. But her mind didn’t go to the obvious things like Tibby or Eric or Nurse Tabitha or Carmen or Lena, it went further back, to her mother. The memories opened not in any logical order but in flashes, some sweetly nostalgic and others devastating.
And then, without warning, her mind skipped all the way back to the present. It flashed on the glass jar in Bailey’s arms and then flashed ahead to the very near future, the morning right in front of them. The thought of it made her so restless she sat up in bed and put her feet on the floor. She imagined Bailey waking up and finding the bugs dead or dying among the bits of grass in the jar.
Bridget had killed enough lightning bugs in her life to know how it went. Whatever light they might muster in the context of the morning sun looked tawdry and pitiful, so you couldn’t believe there had been any grandeur to it at all.
She couldn’t tolerate the idea of Bailey’s discovering them in that state. What would Bailey’s delicate heart say about that? What would she think of Bridget’s magic then?
How could Bridget have ever thought the lightning bugs were a good idea? What business had she to try to capture life and light? Why was she incapable of thinking anything through? She belonged in the lower orders with the termites and cockroaches. She belonged in a jar, small and powerless, where she couldn’t do harm.
Bridget crept out of her room and into Bailey’s. She carefully pried the jar from between Bailey’s arms and crept back to the hallway. She went through the back door out onto the dampening grass. She unscrewed the lid and showed the poor bugs the sky, imagining they would fly to freedom. But they didn’t. They were apparently so stunned by their twisting fate, the only way to get them out was to dump them on the grass. She watched them trying to reorient.