Sisterhood Everlasting

  “Tibby’s gone,” she said. She had no idea there were tears leaking out, but there they were. Her face was wet; they had to be hers.

  He nodded. Somehow he knew about it already. That was a relief in a way, because she wasn’t sure she could put enough words in a row to explain it.

  “She drowned.”

  He nodded again.

  “Here.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “I thought you would probably be in London.”

  “I was.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “On a plane.”

  She nodded in spite of her confusion. Did that mean he’d come here because she’d called him? Did that make sense? This and other possibilities hovered in the air, but she couldn’t consolidate them. “I felt like I should be able to handle the police and the coroner and the embassy and everything else, but I haven’t done very well at it.”

  “I hope I can help.”

  She nodded. “They’ve all gone back. Tibby’s parents and Carmen and Bridget. They were all gone by yesterday morning. I think.” She paused. She was going to say something about Tibby going with them. Tibby’s body going with them. But she couldn’t figure out the way you said it. There was a way you said things like that. “I think it was yesterday morning.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “At first we thought it was an accident, but now it seems like she knew she was going to drown.”

  He tipped his head; his eyes registered confusion. “What do you mean?” He looked not just sad but surprised now.

  “It seems like she brought us here to say goodbye.” These were things Lena had not dared say out loud to anyone or even fully think, and here she was saying them to him. She who usually did so much thinking and considering for every word that left her mouth, she didn’t think at all. She just opened her mouth and these were the words that came out.

  “Why do you think that?” His face was tender. He was still holding her hand.

  “Because she left things for us. To say goodbye.”

  Kostos nodded. He was quiet for some time. “Are you sure?”

  She shook her head. “Not of anything anymore. But she wrote to us about getting along without her. She left us envelopes of things to be opened later, when she said she knew she couldn’t be with us.”

  “Could she have been planning to go somewhere? To move away?”

  Lena considered. “She wrote to us about how she wanted us to remember her.”

  With the hand that wasn’t holding hers, Kostos rubbed his eyes. “It does seem like she knew something was going to happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you are afraid that if she did, then maybe she meant for it to happen.”

  That was the step Lena couldn’t follow. You would think that, but she couldn’t have meant for it to happen.

  “Did anyone talk to the police or the coroner about that?”

  She shook her head, stricken. “Because I just can’t imagine it.” She didn’t remember crying, but her face was wet again. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  “But that’s how it seems.”

  “That’s how it seems.”

  Bridget sat down at the laden kitchen table and stood up again. She paced the sunless room. She ate half a slice of avocado and felt it curdling her stomach.

  She couldn’t seem to focus on Eric’s face, or really on anything. Her eyeballs seemed to vibrate in their sockets. She tried to sit down again, but she couldn’t. Her legs would not be still. She felt Eric’s concerned eyes on her and tried not to let the panic show. He was expecting her to tell him about Tibby, but she couldn’t do it.

  “I’m going to walk,” she announced. “I need to get something at the drugstore.”

  He stood. “I can get it. I don’t mind.”

  “No, thanks. I need to move around a little. I was on a plane for a lot of hours.”

  “But you didn’t eat yet.”

  She grabbed half the burrito in its foil to eat on the way. “It’s a girl thing I need. Can’t really wait.” She was halfway to the door before he could stop her.

  “Do you want company?” he asked, following her.

  “No, no. I’ll be back soon.” She didn’t even look behind her. She stumbled down the stairs and let the big door close after her with a bang.

  She walked. She walked quickly without thinking of where to go. She paused long enough to drop the half burrito into a garbage can. She would have liked to have her bike, but she didn’t want to go back for it. She didn’t walk to the drugstore. She didn’t get or need girl things. She needed to keep moving.

  She walked up Divisadero Street and saw the sunset. It was a beautiful pink, orange, and deep gray sky, but the beauty of it didn’t enter her eyes. It stayed on their surface, a reflection.

  She would have kept walking down into the Marina and into the sea, but the thought buzzed and nagged every few minutes like a clock-radio alarm set to snooze that just would not leave you alone: Eric was waiting for her. Eric was sitting with a table of her favorite food. Eric was worried about her, and the thought of him wouldn’t leave her alone.

  At last that alarm nagged so loudly she stopped and turned around and walked straight back down Divisadero. She walked all the way home, harnessing her panic to propel some kind of plan. A bad plan, a wrong plan, but the only plan she could tolerate.

  “I was starting to worry about you,” Eric said as soon as she walked in the door.

  She went directly to the bathroom and closed the door. She hadn’t been sensible enough to bring home a bag. “You shouldn’t worry,” she called through the door.

  She sat on the closed toilet and put her head in her hands.

  This is the man you love, some part of her felt the need to say.

  I don’t even know what that means, the rest of her responded. I don’t know how to do that now.

  She thought of the bed. The four posters. She came out of the bathroom when she could.

  Eric was reading legal papers at the kitchen table. He’d put away the food.

  She stood sheepishly in the doorway. She touched her fingers to the messy part in her hair. She hadn’t washed it in days. “Hey,” she said quietly.

  He smiled at her, but his smile was uncertain. “Do you want to watch something? A movie?”

  She nodded. It seemed easier than talking. He spent a lot of time perusing their small library. She knew he wanted to be careful. Nothing with death. Nothing dark or challenging. At last he put on The Princess Bride. He knew she loved it. It would be distracting if not captivating.

  He sat on the couch and she sat between his knees on the floor, trying to figure out some way to settle her restless legs short of chopping them off.

  The movie was neither captivating nor distracting. By the time they got to the fire swamp, Eric was yawning and Bridget could no longer pretend to sit still. She reached for the remote and turned it off.

  “You go to bed,” she suggested. “I know you’re tired. I’ll unpack for a few minutes and then I’ll join you.”

  “I wish you’d come now,” he said, but with a look of resignation.

  “I need to unpack a few things. I’m on Greek time.” She stopped herself before she added a third poor excuse.

  He went into the bedroom and she went through the motions of opening her suitcase in the living room and pulling things out of it. Soon enough she heard the rhythmic sound of his breathing.

  Eric always fell asleep quickly, in the way of a good person. He slept deeply, the reward for innocence and hard work.

  Bridget stood in agitation by the kitchen window. She moved in agitation to the doorway of the bedroom and watched him sleep. She couldn’t get in the bed. It looked like a prison cell to her. She retrieved her hiking pack from her closet. She brought it into the living room and transferred about half of the things from her suitcase into her pack. The apartment felt like a prison to her.

  She tied her sleeping bag to the pack
and left it by the front door. She grabbed her cellphone from the front table and stuck it in her pocket. She went to the side of the new bed and leaned down to kiss Eric on the temple.

  “I can’t do it. I’m sorry,” she said, too quietly for him to hear.

  She jotted a note and left it on the table.

  I can’t stay. I have to keep moving. I’m sorry to go. I love you.

  With her pack on her back and an ache in her chest, Bridget walked across the city. She walked down through Cole Valley and up into the Haight, through the disaffected late-night hordes. She walked all the way down Fulton Street to the ocean and stood on the dark beach. She took off her shoes and socks and walked to the edge of the surf. The Pacific was mighty. It could swallow anything. She took her cellphone out of her pocket and threw it as far as she could into the waves. She’d offer that for starters.

  She laid her sleeping bag out on the sand and crawled into it, trying to stop her body from shaking. She lay on her back, staring at the quiet stars, wondering when the fog would roll over her.

  Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn’t get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn’t escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison.

  Kostos walked out the door of her grandparents’ house, explaining about needing to pick up a few things. Lena closed the door behind him and promptly presumed she had hallucinated the entire episode.

  But a short time later he returned, carrying a leather satchel and two bags of groceries. Within minutes he was fielding phone calls, one from somebody connected to the U.S. consulate and one from the local police precinct. He seemed to know everything and everyone without her having to say a word. She wondered if she was still hallucinating.

  He hung up the phone, unpacked his groceries, and made her a plate of scrambled eggs and toast with sweet tea. She sat across the little kitchen table from him and ate. It had been so long since she’d put food in her mouth it felt strange, as though her tongue had forgotten how to taste and her teeth how to chew. She took a break in the middle and rested her chin on her hand. It was oddly exhausting, eating.

  She considered his face, more in pieces than as a whole. She couldn’t take it all together. There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn’t quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren’t under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you’d have to land eventually.

  His cheekbones, his nose, and his jaw were more prominent than she remembered. His principal expressions had become etched into his face—the eye crinkles from laughter, concern, and maybe near-sightedness, the subtle lines around his mouth. She watched the lines shift and move when he talked.

  He had yesterday’s whiskers, lightened by sparkles of silver. You are older, she thought. But this was her Kostos, the man she remembered, not the man from the magazines. Could there be two of him? She had the remote idea of looking at his hand for a ring. He didn’t have one on the marriage finger, but he did have a silver one on the middle finger. She didn’t know what signified what in Greece or in London, and she couldn’t follow her own thoughts.

  “How strange this is,” she said quietly, to him, her eggs, herself.

  I figure I basically am a

  ghost.

  I think we all are.

  —John Astin

  Dear Dad,

  I appreciate you calling all those times and I’m sorry I haven’t called back. That was a really nice note you sent. I know you want to be there for the burial, but Alice says please wait and come to the memorial service in the spring. I know you want to help, and I really appreciate it. I’ll call you when I get back to New York, or maybe I can come down to Charleston for a visit sometime. So, anyway, thanks a lot, Dad, and I’ll talk to you soon.

  Love,

  Carmen

  Carmen stared at the email for a long time without pressing send. She lay in her old bed, her old bed in her mother’s big new house, and in a strange way she felt like she and her dad were slowly switching places.

  She remembered how frustrated she used to be with him for avoiding her sadness, blandly saying things like suffering made you stronger and hard knocks were for the best. In the old days she’d wanted most of all to share something important with him, to be brought closer to him by it. Now he was ready to acknowledge her grief, to show her the way, and she didn’t want any of it. Who was the avoider now? She couldn’t take his grief and she couldn’t take her own.

  She glanced down at the email icon on her phone. It showed there were five new messages, and she saw in them a couple of minutes of salvation. She recognized in herself the familiar old maneuvers: the dodge, the stall, the float-above-it-all. She recognized them from having watched him. And in his plaintive offerings she recognized an old self of hers who tried harder to be brave.

  “Do you want to sleep?” Kostos asked Lena as she yawned over her tea.

  “If I could, I would,” she said.

  He had an open and sympathetic face. He always had—even when he was crushing her hopes most brutally. “You lie down on the couch and I’ll answer the phone or the door. I’ll watch over everything.”

  I’ll watch over the sadness for you, he seemed to be saying. I’ll watch over the worry and the big, dark questions so you can get a little rest.

  “Thank you. I’ll try,” she said. She lay down, her hands under her head, and he gave her a wool blanket. He spread it over her as though it were his house, not hers. And it was his more than hers. He’d been spending time in this house his whole life, and she had only come four times, always to lose things—her heart, her grandfather, her pants, Tibby, and along with Tibby her sense of comfort that she understood anything about the world or ever had. He touched her anklebone by mistake.

  He sat in the green upholstered chair across from her. She watched him carefully, openly, as he got up and retrieved his bag from the other side of the room and took out his newspaper. She forgot that she was supposed to be sleeping and that it was a weird thing to do.

  He put his feet up on the coffee table and glanced at her. She closed her eyes, but they didn’t want to stay shut. Her lids felt not heavy but rubbery and light, and perhaps too short to even cover her eyeballs. Strange.

  She turned over to face the couch instead. Maybe her eyelids had become short because she wanted to look at him. She gazed at the pattern of the couch for a while—green, blue, yellow, ochre, garnet-red hydrangea puffs that didn’t really look at all like hydrangea puffs but like a fantastically druggy impression of them. This was a couch that wouldn’t go with any painting.

  And then she started to wonder what would happen to this couch. This would be one of the things her father wouldn’t know what to do with. She pictured it sitting out on the winding street, waiting for someone to claim it, the harsh island sun picking out every sign of wear.

  She pictured her grandparents buying it. She imagined the boxy furniture store in Fira in about 1972, her grandmother effusive over the colors and her grandfather with his sweet face and nothing to say. She pictured how the couch would look in her studio apartment in Providence. It wouldn’t fit. She’d have to get rid of her bed. It was a thought.

  When she flipped back over she discovered that Kostos’s newspaper had drifted to his lap, his head had drifted backward, and his eyelids had closed. With wide-open eyes she watched him sleep. I guess I can watch over you, she thought. The sight of his sleeping self seemed almost like a feast offered to her eyes, both inviting and overwhelming. She had hungry eyes, even now. The thing that always held her back was that she hated being caught looking. And now she could look all she wanted. For a time, his face belonged not to the important world, but to her.

  She did a strange thing, which was she got a sketchbook and charcoal from her bag. Those two
items lived permanently in her bag, but she hadn’t gotten them out and used them in a long time. Kostos slept quietly and she drew his face, full as it was of dramas she could barely remember right now. Even if your brain didn’t understand anything, your eyes could still see. Even if you were high above, looking down on the thunderhead and not yet getting pummeled by it, you could still draw. That felt like a saving grace.

  When he opened his eyes it took him a few seconds to come back to her. A look of apology materialized on his face. He had wanted to watch over her. He really had meant to, but the sadness and the worry were like unruly children, very difficult to babysit.

  Kostos talked on the phone in her grandparents’ kitchen and Lena sat by the window and looked out at a small segment of the street and the house a few yards across it. She could have gone upstairs and given herself the whole magnificent expanse of the Caldera, but sometimes a close view was all a person could handle.

  She listened to his voice. It had been electrifying in the past, but it lulled her now. For some reason her mind strayed to an image of her hyperactive cousin who needed a stimulant to calm down.

  Kostos was, as she’d known he would be, the perfect person for this burden. He was already the trusted friend of the guy at the consulate, the go-to man for the last loose ends at the precinct. At some point she realized he’d switched from English to Greek, but she hadn’t noticed right away because she hadn’t stopped understanding.

  Lena thought for a moment of Eudoxia. I did call him after all, she thought sadly.

  Kostos was quiet for a while, and when she went to check on him, he’d taken apart the kitchen faucet to fix the drip. She watched him for a few minutes from the doorway, forgetting to be self-conscious and that he might be.

  “Nobody’s taken care of this house for a long time,” she said.