Same Beach, Next Year

  “That’s too funny! So, let’s say we meet at Café Liston at one o’clock? It’s not too heavy, and you know dinner tonight is going to be a big meal. My mother is cooking lamb and fish and everything in the world.”

  “That sounds great! I’ll be there.”

  I paid the small entrance fee with my Visa card and went inside to see the Asian art. There were endless statues, pieces of armor, ceramics, and silks. In the Chinese galleries, there were somber, beautiful funerary pieces that fascinated me. One in particular caught my eye, a lone female equestrian, oddly sitting western style, astride a noble horse, bound for the afterlife. The rider was dressed for a grand occasion, her hair atop her head in a great swirl and her clothing ornate and detailed. Her face was expressionless, as though the trip was not unexpected. It was not serene but resigned. The statue struck me as kind of a notation of life in general, that we arrive alone and we will leave alone. It was attributed to the Tang Dynasty, sometime in the late sixth or seventh century.

  “Wow,” I whispered to the empty gallery.

  I moved on to the Japanese galleries. After passing dozens of kimonos and painted fans, ceramics and domestic objects, I came upon a gallery of woodblock prints. When I was a young woman and taking an art history class, thinking erroneously that I’d get an easy A, we studied the art of making woodblock prints. I stood now in front of an eight-color woodblock showing two women in traditional Japanese dress, long kimonos tied at the waist with wide obis. Their hair was in an updo secured by hair sticks. They were wearing geta sandals and one woman held a fan, an indication of warm weather. They were tending a small garden, and one of the women held a morning glory blossom between her fingers. It reminded me of the great pleasure gardening gave to me. It wasn’t just about the harvest of flowers or vegetables. It was about the time spent there. I always came away with a feeling of peace. What would happen to my garden now?

  I went on and on, from one gallery to another, and I looked at everything until it became a blur. Maybe visiting a museum on my first day here wasn’t such a great idea. My heart was so heavy every time I thought of Adam that I definitely wasn’t giving the collection the focus it deserved. It was still early enough to go see something else before lunch. I decided a church was in order.

  I asked the ladies at the entrance which one to see and they were emphatic.

  “You must see Agios Spyrídon!” said one.

  “He is the patron saint of Corfu. He works many miracles!” said the other.

  The first one added in a whisper, “He still protects us, and every now and then they have to replace his shoes.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Because,” she said, again in a whisper, “he roams the streets at night, checking on us!”

  “He wears out the soles of his shoes,” the other one said.

  “No kidding,” I said. “Can I walk there from here?”

  “It’s no problem at all.”

  They gave me directions, and I thanked them and left.

  I looked into the sky for the church with the red dome on its steeple, which was easy to find. The tower clock in the church’s belfry began to chime and I looked at my watch. It was ten to twelve. Saint Spyrídon was early, I said, smiling to myself.

  In the entrance of the church were stacks of brochures about the life of the saint and the miracles he performed. Well, I’m a sucker for a miracle story, and I thought I sure could use one right about now. I took a brochure, sat down in a pew, and read. Then I looked around me. He stopped armies. He stayed the enemies of Corfu. He healed the sick.

  Incredible, I thought. The church itself was a gorgeous sixteenth-century building with a ceiling covered with murals of Saint Spyrídon dressed in deep red robes performing miracles. All around the altar were beautiful icons. I couldn’t think of a single church in Charleston that was so ornate.

  The brochure said that as a bonus, his incorrupt mummified remains were there, including his right hand, which no one seems to know how he lost but which is also in an alleged incorrupt state. That hand had traveled a bit—to Rome, Russia, and other spots. Saint Spyrídon? Well, let’s just see what the remains of a seventeen-hundred-year-old incorrupt saint looks like, I said to myself. I got up and went up to the altar, where others stood in a line. I assumed they were there to ask the saint for a favor.

  There was an Orthodox priest with a bushy salt-and-pepper beard positioned there behind the altar, chanting in Greek. As he sang, it became clear that he was chanting to the saint on behalf of each petitioner. I only had a few minutes to think of what I wanted to ask. When it was my turn, I awkwardly introduced myself to the priest. The saint was lying there in an open silver coffin, so elaborate I could not even imagine anything more grand. It was completely unprotected by a glass panel or anything. I was astonished by the lack of security. Just me, Saint Spyrídon, and a crusty old Orthodox priest.

  “Hi, I’m Eliza Stanley from Charleston, South Carolina,” I said, instantly realizing that I could’ve said I was Marilyn Monroe and it wouldn’t have made a lick of difference.

  He just smiled and said, “Ask Agios Spyrídon . . .”

  Then he touched his own heart several times and I knew he meant for me to ask for my favor from my heart to the heart of the Saint. I thought of Adam. Please help me put us back together again, I asked silently.

  I took a good look at the saint. He looked terrible. But I had to admit, he still had skin. You’d think someone who died in a.d. 325 would be nothing but a pile of bones. And I took a look at his shoes. They were velvet slippers. I looked back at the priest. He motioned his approval to touch the foot of the saint. So I did. I know this will sound insane, but for one tiny moment it felt like time stopped and I was in midair, and then without so much as a watch your step, I was on my feet and back in the world.

  “Thank you,” I said and moved on.

  So, that’s probably what LSD feels like, I thought. I couldn’t wait to tell Kiki.

  I left the church and hurried down the bustling streets to the Café Liston where I was to meet her. I passed dozens of shops selling souvenirs, whiskey, olive oil, and the quince liquor that was so popular. I reminded myself to buy some to take home. If I went home.

  The restaurant was swarmed with midday diners, everyone talking at once. Kiki was there waiting at a table, doing e-mail on her phone. We could have been having lunch under the colonnade on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris, the architecture was so similar. She looked up at me smiling.

  “Hey there!” she said.

  “You won’t believe who I just saw!” I said, and we swapped air kisses.

  “Sit! Sit! Tell me everything,” she said.

  I told her what I had learned about the saint and she said, “Oh please! When I was a schoolgirl, the teacher would call roll. She’d say, is Spiros here, and twenty boys would raise their hands!”

  “Well, do you believe the stories about his shoes?” I said.

  “Why not? This is Corfu! The home of mythology and truth. Now, do you feel like a sandwich or a salad?”

  I looked at the menu and saw it was heavily influenced by Italian cuisine.

  “I came to Corfu to see Asian art and eat Italian food!”

  “That’s the way it goes these days. But believe me, you’ll eat plenty of Greek food before you leave here!”

  We ordered lunch, which came quickly, and I ate like I had not eaten in weeks. Kiki was telling me more about Saint Spyrídon between bites. Prayers to the saint resulted in the failure of an invasion by Turkey. The Turks had fifty thousand troops on the ground and a good number of ships surrounding the island. It was 1716, and Saint Spyrídon appeared in front of the troops holding a raised sword in his right hand. Never mind that he had been dead for almost fourteen hundred years. The Turks were so terrified, they ran for their lives. The governor of Corfu once wanted to do something to honor the Orthodox saint. A visiting Roman Catholic cardinal suggested that it would please the Almighty if the governor would build a ma
rble altar in Saint Spyrídon’s Greek Orthodox church where he could say a Latin Mass. Naturally, the governor agreed. The materials were gathered and they were ready to begin the conversion of the church from Greek Orthodox to Roman Catholic. The islanders got into an uproar because they considered this to be an unthinkable blasphemy. The governor was outraged that the people should question his judgment and authority. So the people prayed to their saint for deliverance, and deliverance they got. Saint Spyrídon began appearing in the governor’s dreams telling him to back off. Saint Spyrídon brought about a storm so powerful that the lightning bolts exploded the powder keg at the Old Fort and killed nine hundred Roman soldiers and zero Orthodox. The remains of the governor were found crushed between heavy beams, and the cardinal’s body was found in a sewage ditch, holding on to his—well, there’s no nice way to put this—family jewels.

  “Boom!” I said. “So much for those guys!”

  “Exactly! The stories about him are spectacular, but I tell you, everyone who lives on Corfu believes them. They believe every single word. He is a very powerful saint.”

  “Well, it certainly gives you hope about the hereafter being a reality. What else did he do?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things. During his lifetime when he was saying Mass, people nearby reported hearing a huge heavenly choir in the church. But when they went inside to see who was singing, there was only Saint Spyrídon and a couple of members of the congregation. Do you want dessert?”

  “Baklava?”

  “Of course! But we’re going to get fat.”

  “I’ve been craving it. You can’t get this in South Carolina. Saint Spyrídon. Wow. No wonder my mother loved this place so much.”

  Kiki smiled at me. I could read her mind. Well, almost. Maybe if I could understand all the reasons my mother loved Corfu so deeply, I would somehow have her back with me. Instead of pushing Greece away as I had for years, I would begin to embrace it again, the way I had as a child. There’s not a whole lot that’s lonelier than being a motherless child. Discovering Corfu might give me some new roots.

  “My mother is about to explode with excitement to see you. You might want to catch a nap before tonight, because I can tell you they’re going to have you up until all hours.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” I said.

  The mere mention of the word nap was making me sleepy.

  Kiki dropped me off at the house and said she would pick me up at seven that evening. I thanked her and waved as she pulled away from the curb.

  To my surprise, there were packages piled up at the front door of Yiayia’s house. I picked them up and went inside.

  What in the world? I thought and dropped them on the dining table.

  They were gifts! Exactly as my grandmother’s friends and neighbors had done when I was so very young, some very sweet people had come around to the house to welcome me with a few little surprises.

  I began to open them. There was a purple hand-sewn silk cover that held a pack of tissues with a signed greeting card. Very thoughtful! I couldn’t have told you what that card said for a million dollars. But I wrote a description of the gift on it. I’d get Kiki to help me decipher and to thank the right people. Then there was a set of beautifully embroidered dish towels that someone had spent hours working on. Someone else had brought a tiny, pretty, blue and white ceramic pot with rosemary planted in it. I ran my hand across the needles and smelled it. I loved rosemary. Next I unwrapped a homemade loaf cake filled with fruit and nuts. It would be a wonderful treat for breakfast. Someone had brought a box of butter cookies topped with pistachios that smelled amazing. Finally, I opened a flat box that contained a pretty scarf, blue swirls on white, like the water that surrounded the island. I made notes and looked at all these thoughtful things and realized that one of the many things I was missing in my life was a sense of community. The quietude of living in the country had become almost complete isolation. The boys were gone. Our pets were gone. Well, if I went back to Adam—and it was awfully strange to even think of my situation in those terms—I was getting a dog. And maybe I’d spend more time at Wild Dunes. Like, a lot more time.

  I stretched out on the bed and looked at the ceiling. What did I want? Well, that one was easy. What I wanted was for this never to have happened. I was pretty sure I couldn’t turn back the clock. Did I really want Adam to be free to see Eve? Well, he was going to anyway if he wanted to. It wasn’t like I had him on a leash. Should I tell him to do whatever he wanted to? Hell, no. It would be much more interesting to watch and see what he would do than to give him permission or a mandate. My great disappointment was based on the fact that I’d been living with a man for all these years who really loved somebody else. That broke my heart. My lesser disappointment lay in the fact that he placed his wants and needs too far over mine. I would never be so submissive again.

  I turned over on my side, punched the pillow into submission, and somehow drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

  Nearby church bells roused me at six in the evening. I rolled over and looked at my watch. It was six fifteen. I smiled, thinking about the tower clock in Corfu Town that had been wrong earlier in the day. Evidently, punctuality wasn’t all that important. I took a deep breath and thought, I’m in the Mediterranean! People come here from all over the world to relax. I should just take a page out of their book and not worry so much. I had been trying to act normal with Kiki, but she knew something was terribly wrong. Who flies to Greece on a moment’s notice?

  I washed my face and brushed my teeth, thinking that after all the strong coffee I’d enjoyed my breath probably smelled dreadful. What should I wear to Aunt Anna’s? What would she say about me never being in touch with them? Would she want to know why I was here? I hoped she’d never learned to speak English.

  I decided on black slacks and a red sweater with flat black ballet slippers. I dressed, applied a little makeup, and looked in the mirror. I looked sad. Well, hopefully it could be explained away as jet lag.

  chapter 14

  adam

  Eliza had been gone for barely twenty-four hours and I was completely discombobulated. I had a first-class seat on a high-speed, death-defying emotional roller coaster. Angry one minute, penitent the next. Furious again and then weepy like an old woman. The first phone call came from Max at about ten thirty the same night Eliza left.

  “Hey, Dad? You okay?”

  Hell, no, I wasn’t okay. But I wasn’t going to get him all riled up.

  “Of course, I am. How are you?”

  “Good. Dad? Mom called. Why is she going to Greece? Did y’all have a fight?”

  Now, what was I supposed to tell him? The least amount possible, I decided.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. You know she’s always wanted to go back there to see if she could dig up some more family. I said, fine, go! That’s all there is to it. She’ll be back soon.”

  “That’s a heck of a long way to travel alone.”

  “Nah, your mother knows her way around.”

  “Okay, then. I was just checking on you.”

  He was still suspicious.

  “Well, thank you, son. I’m still above ground and taking sustenance. How’s life for my brilliant future doctor?”

  “Oh, you know. About the same. Killing myself over the MCAT.”

  “When do you take it?”

  “End of May.”

  “You’ll do fine. Talk to your brother lately?”

  “Not lately. He’s okay?”

  “As far as I know. If I hear differently, I’ll call you.”

  “Okay, then. Just checking in.”

  “Sure thing. Love you, Max.”

  “Love you too, Dad.”

  I poured a generous measure of Scotch over a glass of ice. Sometimes I had a beer or a glass of wine and then hit the sack, but I wanted to be sure I didn’t toss and turn. Scotch would put me out like a light. Yes, I was sedating myself with alcohol because I didn’t have anything like Ambien in the house. And I assured m
yself I would only be a self-indulgent boozehound for this one night.

  It was eleven o’clock. The phone rang again. Eve.

  “I can’t sleep,” she said.

  Oh, God, I thought. Here we go. Somehow, for the first time in all these years, she called me when the mood struck, and I didn’t want to talk to her. It would complicate things that were already complicated enough.

  “Warm milk,” I said. “It has melatonin in it.”

  “You’re not going to have a problem sleeping tonight?”

  “No, because Scotch has melatonin in it too.”

  She laughed and I began to warm to her, as I always did.

  “Oh, God, Adam. What have we done?”

  “Well, I can only speak for myself, but what it appears I’ve done is throw my marriage on the fucking shoals. Before this is over, I’m sure I’ll be the family asshole for the rest of time.”

  I never cursed in front of Eve. Dr. Dewar’s was taking effect.

  “Potty mouth,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Have you heard from Eliza?”

  “Nope. You heard from Carl?”

  “Nope. Silence like the tomb. How angry do you think Eliza is?”

  “I think she’s more hurt than angry. What I did really rattled the foundation of everything we had together. She probably thinks I’ve been in love with you all along.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t be wrong.”

  “No, but loving you is wrong.” I wasn’t going to tell her that now that I could have her, she was less appealing, less of a beautiful dream. But for some reason I never saw coming, it was true. The cost of having Eve was way too high, especially if it meant that I’d have to give up Eliza. I loved Eliza in a different way, a deeper love. Hell, I’d spent my entire adult life with her.

  “So, what should we do?”

  Who’s this we, I thought.

  “I don’t know. It’s too fresh. Let’s think about it. We can talk tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, then. Good night.”