Chapter 21
“Oh, hi you guys. You coming in for supper?”
“Yup,”
“Yeah, hi babe. Philbert.”
I hold the door for the boys and they lean in for kisses as they pass. I go borrow two rocks from the porch and put them against the doors so we can get a breeze going inside.
“Oh, good. I was just going to do that,” my zizi says. She pokes some more at the channel changer.
“Zizi, what are you doing?”
“I’m putting on the news, sweetheart.”
“What did you do to it? Why is the menu not in English?”
“I don’t know, dear, that’s what I’m trying to fix.”
“What language is that?”
“Mm, I think it’s Arabic or something.”
“I don’t think it’s Arabic.”
“Honestly, dear, I think it’s Arabic.”
“It’s not Arabic. I studied Arabic. It’s not Arabic.”
“Can you read it?”
“No.”
“Well, then.”
“Zizi, give me that thing, will you? You’re going to drop the barnacles.”
“No, no, I’ve got them. Unless you want to serve them for me.”
“Zizi, don’t push that. Hit the green one.”
“Just leave it to me, Crusa, I know what to do.”
“No you don’t, Zizi!”
“Honey. I’ve been working this tv since before you were born. I’ve put on the evening news since I was younger than you. I know how to work this tv.”
“It’s acting like it can’t connect to the satellite.”
“I forget what this button’s for. Maybe it’s the one.”
It’s not. She forgot about that one for a good reason, she surmises. In the end, I have to run down to the basement to shut down the generator, sit around in the dark with a bunch of stored food and musty garden tools for it to cool, pour in fresh oil, and restart the whole thing. Then, back upstairs, which is so humid it makes me want to go back into the basement, my zizi hits a string of buttons that she says she can’t remember what they were and the newscast comes on.
She turns it halfway down and I shake my head and help her finish throwing the salad together, even though people have already eaten the rest of the food. We made the salad so we’ll serve the salad, she says. My aunts all assure us they wanted something green.
After a supper of salad and a little pasta with squash and cheese, and a handful or so of the corkscrew barnacles, not at all in that order, my zizi hunts down every single empty shell while people stand around with cups of tea and milk, so it’s easier to jump out of the way when she comes close. Nose down and hunched shoulders bulldozing.
“So, Hale. Do you know if my cousin and your brother are a couple?”
“Who?” Hale, slouched and hulking against a wall, responds. I’m impressed Eleni got him to respond at all, actually. She really does have a talent. Fearless, too. Even with his gruff tone that would make me stop dead in my tracks, she is unperturbed.
“I keep trying to figure it out, but neither of them have talked to me about it, so I don’t know if that means they’re both just talking about it only to each other, which would mean they are, or if they’re not talking about it at all to anybody, which could go either way, really. I just think they seem guilty, which is why it’s so annoying that I can’t tell if they are or aren’t a couple. What do you think? Have they told you anything?”
“Eleni!”
“What?” She turns to me and pouts her pink lips. “How do I know what in God’s name you two’ve been off doing down at the docks? If you told me, then I wouldn’t have to ask people, you know.” She whips back to Hale, who I imagine is trying to figure out if he can still keep pretending he doesn’t know who his brother and I are. It doesn’t look good.
Eleni asks him, “What happened to your work? I mean, I thought you and him were looking after my uncle’s bait shop.”
Hale still can’t decide if he knows us, though I don’t think Eleni is taking that so graciously anymore. I, meanwhile, am so furious with my cousin that I can’t even imagine what I should do. I really need to come up with a list and keep it in my pocket for times like these.
Thank the ancestors, she is silent when Lium comes to our spot. He walks over a bench onto a table onto another bench and finally the floor and hands me a steaming cup of tea, the exact color that I like it.
“Hot,” he cups his own in calloused hands and blows on it. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you and Crusa a couple?”
I can’t look at him, so all I know is he puts his cup down.
“No,” he says. Because we aren’t.
“Then why are you always with her?”
“I promised your aunt and uncle I’d look after her.” That’s true and exactly how my uncle’s favored guard should answer, but it does sting a bit, as it to has nothing to do with me. Which I should get over. I’m a grown woman.
“So?”
“Eleni.”
She dares me to say something more. When I don’t, she faces Lium, “Some promise between you and some other guy ties you two together, it doesn’t mean anything for what’s between her and you.”
“I swore I’d do it, and I will,” says Lium. He’s getting mad. His accent gets worse when he’s mad, I happen to have noticed. Not that I’ve made him mad a lot these past few days, or anything.
“Swore to my uncle,” Eleni points out.
“No, I just swore it. I don’t belong to him. To anyone. I do what I want.” I scan the meetinghall quickly to make sure my uncle isn’t near. He’s by the front alcove. Thank the forefathers.
Lium and Eleni meet each other’s glares. His glowering one to her bright flickering one. I put a hand on his back. What he said, I don’t think that can always be true. Or ever be that simple. But plopping in my own two cents isn’t my top priority at the moment.
I think Lium is out of words.
“Don’t listen to her, Lium. Come on.” It’s easier than I anticipated to draw him out onto the back porch, though he does grumble the entire way, and my zizi reaches right in between us for a barnacle shell. He almost seems happy to go off with me.
Outside, I lecture him on astrology and the history of its use in maritime navigation until his eyes glaze over. I don’t think he notices when I don’t finish explaining why using the moons of Jupiter can be problematic.
I sip someone’s tea they left out here, cool and a little too creamy but still fresh, and think about what Eleni said. Because she’s right, mostly. But it’s not a promise to anyone that Lium was getting defensive over. It was more that she questioned his word. And he took that as her questioning his ability. And boys like to think they can do anything.
I’m sorry that it got him riled up, but it doesn’t phase me. For some reason, I trust him. Maybe it’s those steady, heated eyes, or maybe it’s the rough and gentle hand that I’ve grown accustomed to, that’s waiting for me to finish my sip, now. Takes my teacup, then keeps my hand, there’s a drive that has nothing to do with my uncle. Or me. Like he said, he doesn’t belong to anyone. It’s a little sad.
My zizi would say someone should be sweet to this person. I bet I could be sweet. I could be sweeter than anyone else for him. But I can’t. I have my own promises, old devotions, from long ago.
I lean against his arm and watch the stars, instead. There aren’t too many. I can even count them.
“Seventeen.” The boy takes a moment to wake up from wherever he was, and then a few more to answer.
“What?”
“There’s seventeen stars.”
“One for each year since you were born.”
“I guess so.”
“Crusa?”
“Mm?” I should be paying more attention, though, because next he changes the subject.
“I’d miss you, if you weren’t waiting here tomorrow.” He pauses. I’m startle
d he was thinking all that time. “I don’t like missing people. If I could, I wouldn’t leave you to wait.”
“You have to,” I remind him, though I’m sorry to. I didn’t realize he noticed me that much, or that he felt so attached.
“I don’t want to miss you, so I’m telling you now, I’m coming. Just so, you know, fair warning.”
Peeking from under his shoulder, I say, “Fair warning.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
I close my eyes, savoring my new friend.
“So…will you be here?”
I smile to myself, “Yes. Of course, Lium. I live here.” I happen to glance at him then, but he’s grinning and it catches me up. It’s so beautiful, I just admire it.
“You’ve just made a man very happy, Crusa.”
I shy back down, “He’s welcome.”