Scorpionfish

  “Not well how?” I asked. He must have known about the stealing, the rapid changes in mood. I told him that without her pre-show adrenaline her mood had dimmed considerably.

  “Around you she wants to pretend she’s fine,” he said.

  I could feel that sharp twist in my guts again. It was true that Nefeli had grown distant, but I was used to the way we’d sometimes talk three times per day and other times she’d disappear for weeks into the labyrinthine space of her work, her mind. I knew she once had stayed with the novelist in the village, but in the past few years she’d converted an old shepherd’s cottage into a small studio and now stayed there. Though I wouldn’t be able to find it again, she’d brought me there once: it was charming and spartan and isolated, with a solar panel and rain barrel, a garden sprawling out back. “I want to die here,” she’d said then, a disconcerting line that now felt alarming.

  “She wants to imagine herself as a woman who is not sick. And that by doing so, she might become well.” I recalled something the Captain had said: From the moment I imagine something, it’s a reality. It may only be in my mind, but a reality all the same.

  The novelist told me the details, though I sensed he knew even more than he was letting on. She’d been fighting a long time, trying all sorts of alternative treatments, including scorpion venom. I felt sick, thinking of the way a woman like Nefeli—independent, unconventional, rejecting tradition and societal norms—seemed forever due, at least here, in this country, to be punished.

  Despite all the wine, I left the village soberer than I’d been in days.

  •

  The next morning I drove to my favorite beach, one you could reach only on foot from the road or by walking over the rocks and through the water from the adjacent cove. It was on the north end of the island, about fifteen kilometers from the mountain village. The road was so bumpy I thought the Fiat would just snap undone, all sides clattering to the ground.

  I hiked down the familiar goat path and noticed something new at the end of the beach: a four-post bed in the small area of shade. The absurdity soothed me. Otherwise I was alone and was filled by the rush of this, no one knowing where I was.

  I stripped down to my bikini bottoms, took a few steps into the water, and could feel myself opening up. What was the source of this near-spiritual ecstasy? The sense of being on the border of earth and sea? Or something primordial, the way fish crawled out of the ocean to live on land, the way we might wish for gills or almost feel the sprouting of wings from our shoulder blades?

  The water was freezing, and I wasn’t quite ready for it, so I lay down atop the blanket. The sun was warm on my back. I fell into a heavy nap and dreamt of Nefeli, waking unsettled. I sent her a text but I had no service and it didn’t go through.

  After noon, the day grew warm. From my bag I retrieved the apricots and cherries I’d purchased from the vendor at the side of the road, the cheese pie. I drank half the bottle of water and flipped to my front. I drifted in and out of sleep, and when I stood up I noticed an older woman on the bed, dressed in a black housedress, also asleep, her body curled up beneath a blanket, her back to me. I hadn’t heard or seen her arrive. When I walked closer I could hear her snoring.

  I swam and swam, back and forth, back and forth, a quick, measured freestyle going nowhere, between the two capes that enclosed the cove. Then I decided to swim farther, to see how far I could go, to see if I could reach the rock out in the distance. In high school I had been a swimmer, and it felt good to channel all the power of my body into measured, strong strokes: one two three four five breathe, one two three four five breathe.

  I grew tired soon enough, wondering what had gotten into me. Finally, I flipped onto my back and whipped my goggles off my face, letting them dangle in my hand. I floated, trying not to move, and let the salty sea gently prop me up. No one knows where I am. I looked up and could still, though barely, see the bed on the shore, smaller now in the distance, rising and falling with the gentle undulations of the waves. I had the strange feeling of seeing my strokes from above, as if I were both myself and some woman I was watching from the separate point of that bed, ashore.

  I was much farther out than I had realized. I was so far into the sea that I was a part of it. Up above, a helicopter hovered. Not far from me was a yacht, though probably not as close as it seemed. I lay still atop the waves awhile. When I became cold I replaced my goggles, making sure they were tight and sealed, and began the swim back, which took all the strength I had, my small lunch long ago burned off. One two three four five. Breathe. The rhythm of my strokes, the fullness in my lungs, all those jumbled fragments racing through my mind. Last summer. My mother and the scorpion fish. Her failing liver. The doctor’s alarm: The sting is very dangerous. Particularly in her state. We must be very careful. We will keep her for a few days.

  What state, I asked the doctor. What state, I asked my father. It’s her liver, the doctor told me. How much does she drink a day. My father’s defensiveness. She doesn’t drink more than anybody else. How much.

  How much?

  I’m getting married, Aris said.

  One two three four five. Breathe breathe. Breathe.

  She’s having a baby, he said.

  Nefeli’s not well, the novelist said.

  I began to swim as though I had just shot off the block in a race, my sixteen-year-old body emerging from within me, lean and strong and trained and understanding how to use the water, to work with it, not against it. The pounding of my heart propelled me forward, a hot little engine. I sliced the water with my hands with a rage that seemed to have no end. My mother on the dread of another Chicago winter: It will kill me, Myroula. Your father won’t leave. He wants to stay here forever. Until we die.

  I’m getting married. I’m going to be a father.

  She wants to imagine herself as a woman who is not sick.

  I was certain I heard music but that was impossible, some sort of minor-keyed singing, but still I slowed my pace to trace it, to listen more closely. It vanished. I began to kick harder and the voices came back. This was not the place to unravel. I kept this pace until finally the seafloor looked as though I could touch it, so many sea urchins. If I was careful I could avoid them. A scorpion fish. The sting is venomous. Her health is not good. How could you not have realized this?

  I felt something touch my ankle and I lurched up, flinging off my goggles and flipping my hair out of my face. I flung myself onto my back, tried to keep my mouth above the waterline, tasted salt, spit. My lungs burning.

  I finally dragged myself out of the water, slouched over, exhausted, a waterlogged shell of the woman I was. A young couple stood on the shore with their hands on their hips, watching me slog through the water. The man called out to ask if I was okay. I couldn’t speak but I nodded, waved my goggles in the air, to answer them. I felt exposed and naked and was glad my wet hair hung over my breasts. What did the others see? An exhausted, topless figure coming out of the water like some drunken, graceless sea nymph? The inverse of a fully clothed woman walking into the sea with stones in her pockets to drown herself?

  When I reached the shore, the woman approached me with a large thick towel and wrapped it around my shoulders. The gesture was so tender I felt a knot form in my throat. My legs buckled. I was shivering.

  The yiayia who’d been sleeping on the bed trudged over, pointing up at the helicopter and saying that I was lucky the coast guard was watching. What was I doing swimming so far, and didn’t I know there were dangerous currents? She waved her hand in the air and then crossed herself. As if she had commanded it, the helicopter rose up and away, back toward some other place in the sky.

  The old woman studied my face, my towel-wrapped body, my feet, then looked straight into my eyes. “Tinos eisai?” she asked. It was a phrase I had not heard since I was a child, from my grandparents. She pushed a lock of hair off of my face. Whose are you? She was asking. To whom do you belong?

  Silence can be terrifying, and th
e longer I was quiet, the more rattled she became. She asked if I was foreign. I couldn’t form words. The younger woman tried to help: “Italian? Bulgarian? Arabic?” Something in my eyes must have alarmed the older one, because she exclaimed, “Girl! Do we need to call a doctor?”

  Did we? The angle of the setting sun felt noisy, her voice was painful on my shivering skin, and the smell of the younger woman’s body lotion stung my eyes. My senses fired and merged and failed, everything jumbled up.

  I finally spoke, in Greek, and assured everyone I was okay. I did not want them to see the way I was trembling. I did not want them to think I was mad. I sat down on my blanket and the old woman watched me, her hands on her hips. Across the small beach my mother stood by the bed, pressing down on the mattress. She sat down and lay back, as if embarrassed by my antics. Too much attention.

  With the towel still around me I removed my swimsuit and pulled on my underwear. I handed the towel back to the woman and pulled on my T-shirt. Then she hugged me, as if we were sisters in our bedroom and I had told her something horrible. Me in my white cotton underwear, she in her boyfriend’s shirt. She said she’d thought she’d seen two women out there—had I gone in alone? I told her I had, which seemed to distress her. Her boyfriend watched, patiently, as if he had witnessed something he wasn’t supposed to but had no other choice. Then he came over to say goodbye. What sort of wretchedness they saw in me I didn’t want to consider. My hair was already beginning to dry in crazy, salty waves; a waterlogged Medusa in underwear, heavy indents from the goggles on my face.

  When they left, I changed into a pair of jeans—an old, soft pair, warm from the sun, and a sweatshirt. My skin was covered with goose bumps, and the touch of the soft fabric on my skin was so good I could have cried. Though the air was warm, I was deeply chilled, shivering from a primal place. I curled up on the blanket and let the air rush from my lungs. Below my heavy, closed eyelids I could feel my pulse, keeping time.

  The beach was silent now, the sea quiet, and I lay still, not wanting to disturb any of it, not wanting to turn it to stone.

  I gathered my things as the last light faded from the sky. I was light-headed with hunger. I could go to one of the tavernas with the gorgeous views, but the thought of eating alone suddenly felt unbearable. I’d get something at the port. To hold me over I stopped instead at a little bakery, about to close, and bought some sesame cookies and orange juice, like I’d just given blood. Then I got into my car and ate three of the cookies, crumbs falling all over my jeans, the seat. I drank the container of juice all at once, some of it dribbling on my chin, which I wiped with my sleeve. I drove away.

  •

  Although my parents had died in Chicago, an accident in the snow, in my mind it’s always here, on this stretch of road. I don’t know why. The day they died my father had been driving, though probably because my mother was drunk. He hated driving, and my desire to learn at sixteen baffled him. But once I’d learned, he loved when I’d drive him around. When we’d attend gatherings together he’d tell his friends I had driven, as though he were telling them I’d taken him there in my helicopter, or flown in on a magic carpet.

  I was grateful for the dark drive, the ability to see only ten feet ahead. No more than I needed, a need-to-know basis. Still, I kept my eyes sharp for a woman walking as if she’d come from the sea. The darkness was a relief. I didn’t want to be reminded of that spectacular landscape, the twists and turns and gorgeous sea views. At that moment I needed the anonymity of night driving, the near terror of turning a sharp, steep corner and feeling I might fly off the cliff. I needed to feel the dropping heft inside me as I veered straight into the black night sky, only my headlights to remind me of the surrounding darkness.

  Wasn’t facing loss the same? Breathe in, breathe out. To see the entire landscape was just too much, the green hills in the distance, the setting sun over the glass sea, the vibrant supermoon. Grief was oceanic; you could get lost in it, as if swimming in deep water while not knowing which end was up. For a moment I experienced the intense sensation of someone next to me, but the passenger seat held only my bag. I thought of the professional mourners, those women hired to lament at funerals, to perform grief, and I finally understood the point. Grief never appeared the way we expected, and it snuck up in terrifying, surprising waves. Others needed to see it translated into something visceral and simple, something that could be read, understood. Because when we’re in its midst it cannot be translated at all.

  In the small rooftop shed, I found the furniture I had dragged there a few summers ago, my father protesting that I’d hurt myself hauling it up there but then being delighted by the rooftop sitting area. I pulled out one of the two divans and a small wooden table. Years ago, Aris and I had slept here, beneath thin cotton blankets and the bright night sky. I woke in the middle of the night and he was standing at the ledge, looking out at the view; from there you could see the dark sea. And then I realized he was pissing out onto the narrow alley. I didn’t want to startle him so I just watched, amusedly, and when he turned to come back to bed he saw me sitting up and he shrugged, laughed.

  I poured the last two shots from a bottle of whiskey into a glass, took a sip, and set it aside. Before I could change my mind, I emptied out my parents’ closets and drawers—there were not many things—into a separate bag, saving a soft oxford and a gray T-shirt of my father’s, and an elegant trench coat and two silk scarves of my mother’s, all of which she’d had since before my birth. I pulled my wild beach hair back in a scarf and put the oxford on over my hot skin. I tried on the jacket, slipped on my mother’s slippers. In every hiding space, the chest of blankets and sweaters, the linen closet, the bathroom cabinet, there were near-empty liquor bottles. I gathered them into a bag.

  Now, the whiskey burned and I enjoyed it. Drink still in hand, I walked back to the dumpster. First I tossed the empty bottles, again satisfied to hear the crash of more glass breaking. Then I was about to toss in the old clothes but instead left them in the shopping bag, on the ground. Perhaps someone would find them. I knew I was about to face another salty wave of grief, and at least I knew what to expect. Its familiarity soothed me. It belonged to me, just the way that living in two worlds, two lives, was my way of being. I approached each return as I did the seasons, the change of weather leaving me momentarily bewildered as to what to wear. Each time I arrived in Greece it was as if I had rediscovered it again. Who would I now be in this place? I had never answered the old woman: To whom do you belong?

  Two young backpackers walked by, looking lost, but the sight of me hurling things into a dumpster, dressed like a lunatic and holding a glass of whiskey, probably didn’t make me seem a person to ask for directions. They hurried past me, in the shamed way we deal with the insane—the man murmuring to himself on the bus, the crazy lady in the central square feeding the pigeons.

  Of course I couldn’t not think of Aris, the way we’d emptied the entire brownstone that way, in a frenzy. Garbage bag by garbage bag: underwear drawers, socks, papers, and old bills that perhaps should have been kept, but I heaved those into the dumpster, too.

  It may seem that because I took Aris’s news with such nonchalance that I was not hurt by it. I was. But I don’t construct a narrative of myself as a loyal, faithful girlfriend, unraveled by Aris’s sexual infidelity. It was more complicated than that: our relationship had never been conventional. It was that he’d moved on, completely present in this new life with Eva, and we had not even had a proper breakup, a proper goodbye. We never assumed sexual fidelity but we, at least I, assumed some sort of loyalty. Maybe I was naïve to actually think there was a difference. What I had taken for devotion was simply complacency, the most dangerous state of all.

  No, I wasn’t naïve. But I wasn’t not naïve either. I could say this about almost anything, my life of betweenness. I was not reeling. A pregnancy, a life with someone who was not me, one that had begun months before I knew. This is what doubled me over. Aris had been living tw
o parallel lives and now they had met. I, too, had been living two lives: my life in the States and my life here, but somehow my rootlessness had become its own sort of trap.

  Back in the house, I felt relieved by the absence of things that did not belong to me. Two of Nefeli’s paintings hung over the couch, several long-faced women seated around a table. I called her yet again but she didn’t pick up.

  No, I was still reeling. Had I not still been reeling from the breakup I would have understood Nefeli’s behavior to be direr than I had. That her odd behavior was not artistic tempestuousness but something more bruised, desperate. Even self-destructive.

  The couple on the beach had thought they’d seen two women out there swimming, and I wondered who had been out there with me and what had happened to her. Maybe I was both in the water and on land, all at once. Maybe I had somehow finally really split myself in two: the woman I was then and the woman I was becoming, both of us out there carving through the waves. I sipped my drink and wondered how long it would be before my mother emerged from inside me, how long I could keep her hidden deep inside before she broke through my skin, triumphant.

  16

  Mira

  That evening, after my afternoon at the sea, I was anxious, buzzing, unable to sit still. I tidied up, went through a few things, found a few books I’d wanted to read. Kyria Voula, whom I had not yet seen but who seemed to appear when I wasn’t around, had left a bowl of strawberries on the table, and a small ceramic pot of homemade yogurt in the fridge, which I ate. She’d taken down my laundry and folded it on my bed. I would remember to leave her some money. I texted Dimitra to call me, then went out for a walk.

  The port was crowded. At the far end, passengers boarded the ferry. I ate a souvlaki on a bench, looking out at the small sailboats, the fishing vessels, the larger, more elegant crafts whose owners either stood in front, proud and admiring, or were nowhere to be found. I was gripped by loneliness.