Second Summer of the Sisterhood

by Ann Brashares

  Lena’s father, being a lawyer and an American now, demanded to talk to Bapi’s doctors and shouted a lot and wanted to have Bapi airlifted to the research hospital in Athens. The reply came that Bapi was too fragile to be moved.

  Lena only had time to leave messages for Tibby and Carmen about what had happened and to call Basia’s and quit a week early. She was packing her suitcase in a daze along with the rest of her family when she remembered the Traveling Pants. She was supposed to get them that day! It was midafternoon and they still hadn’t arrived. Who had had them last? They’d been moving around so fast lately, Lena couldn’t remember. The flight to New York was leaving in two hours! In spite of the crises around her, this became the most urgent source of her worry. How could she go to Greece without them?

  As the rest of her family scurried around the house, she waited by the front door, hoping for a glimpse of a delivery truck. She dragged her feet in the last minutes before her departure.

  “Lena, come on!” her mother was screaming at her from the car as she paused on the sidewalk, still hoping the Pants would somehow magically appear in time.

  They didn’t, and she took it as a bad omen.

  Lena and her family stood by on the flight to New York, and the following morning on a direct flight to Athens. On the 747 rumbling eastward over the Atlantic Ocean, Lena spent most of the time looking at the seatback in front of her. But a lot of scenes played out on the blue polyester. Bapi and his wrinkly elbows poking out the window on the night of the festival of the Assumption last August. Bapi eating Cheerios in his white tasseled shoes. Bapi looking long and hard at her paintings, taking them as seriously as anyone ever had. It seemed funny, maybe, to find your soul mate in an eighty-two-year-old Greek man, but that was what had happened to Lena last summer.

  Lena’s father wrote in a notebook. Effie slept against his left shoulder. Lena’s mother sat grimly beside her.

  At one point, between the first movie and the second, they caught each other in a grim look and then proceeded to stare at each other grimly.

  I wish we could help each other, Lena thought. I wish that you trusted me enough to tell me important things and that I trusted you. Then she found herself wishing that her mother could be her soul mate and not Bapi, who was probably dying. Then Lena started to cry. She curled up in her seat with her back to her mother and let her shoulders shake and her breath forget all the usual patterns. She blew her nose loudly into a cocktail napkin. She was crying for herself and Bapi and Kostos and her grandma and her father and the Traveling Pants that hadn’t come in time, and then for herself some more.

  And yet, when the captain ordered the flight attendants to prepare for arrival, and Lena saw the ancient and beautiful terrain of her grandmotherland below, she felt a thrill in the bottom of her stomach. Somewhere inside, her irrepressible, naïve heart was leaping with eagerness to see Kostos again, even under these wretched circumstances.

  Bee,

  I wish there was a better way to find you, ’cause I want to talk to you right away. So badly. I just found out Lena’s bapi had a stroke. They all left for Greece yesterday. After everything she’s been through, I feel so horrible. I want to make sure you know.

  Love,

  Tibby

  Lena had reasonably begun to believe that what you least wanted to happen was certainly the thing that would happen.

  When they pulled up in the rental car after a long climb up the cliffs of Santorini to the village of Oia and saw Grandma standing outside her egg-yolk front door, her belief was confirmed.

  Grandma wore black from head to toe, and the lines on her face all seemed to point straight down. Lena heard a small cry leave her chest. Her father leaped out of the car and hugged his mother. Lena saw Grandma nodding and crying. They all knew what it meant.

  Effie put her arm around Lena’s shoulders. Lena’s tears were on call, ready for duty. She had cried so much in recent days, she actually felt thirsty. Lena’s hair mixed with Effie’s hair as they held each other and cried. Then they all took turns hugging Grandma. When Grandma saw Lena she let out a moan and seemed to collapse on her shoulders. “Beautiful Lena,” she said, sobbing into her neck. “Vat has happened to us?”

  The funeral was to take place the following morning. Lena woke up and watched the Caldera at dawn, dark gray and pink. The window of her bedroom, now shared with Effie, brought the memories of last summer so close around her she felt as if she could hold them. She remembered sketching Kostos in charcoal from this very spot.

  With a thrum of anticipation and anxiety at seeing Kostos, Lena took extra pains with her appearance. She wore a beautiful sheer black blouse over a camisole borrowed from Effie. She wore pearls in her earlobes. She blow-dried her hair and wore it down around her shoulders, a rare occurrence. She put on the slightest bit of eyeliner and mascara. She knew that even a little makeup set off her celery-colored eyes dramatically, which was why she almost never wore it.

  Lena always downplayed her looks. She wore simple, uninteresting clothes. She hardly ever wore makeup or jewelry and wore her black hair back in a knot or a sloppy ponytail. From when she was a little girl, her mother had always told Lena her beauty was a gift, but as gifts went, Lena compared it to the Trojan horse.

  Her beauty made her feel self-conscious and exposed. It brought her the kind of attention she hated. The very obviousness of it made her feel cheated. Effie, with her big nose, was allowed to be passionate, quirky, wholehearted, and free. Lena, with her small nose, got to be pretty. Lena spent too much of her life making sure none of the people she trusted cared about how she looked, and avoiding the people who did.

  And yet, today, she was polishing up the gift. Today, her hollowness over Bapi, her aching eagerness for Kostos made her desperate, willing to try any power available to her.

  “Oh, my God,” Effie said upon seeing her descend the stairs. “What have you done with Lena?”

  “Duct tape in the closet,” Lena answered.

  Effie admired Lena in seeming awe for a few minutes. “Kostos is going to eat his poor heart out,” she declared.

  And thus, feeling guilty and small, Lena had her private soul read like a poster by her little sister, Effie.

  Tibby looked down at the linoleum floor and remembered how plain and depressing her dorm room had seemed the day she’d moved into it two months ago. Now the floor was covered with dirty clothes she was tossing haphazardly into a large Hefty bag. On her bed she laid out all the videocassettes she had gathered and used in making her movie. On her desk was her iBook, which had worked so hard with her this summer. The computer had been a bribe, but she’d come to love it anyway. On her bureau was her eleven-year-old drawing of her bedroom, which had kept her company in a funny way. There was also the certificate announcing that her movie had won highest honors from the film department, and the note of congratulations from Bagley, her screenwriting teacher. On her nightstand was the purple poison dart frog Vanessa had made expressly for Nicky. Each of these things gave her pleasure as she tucked them, one by one, into her suitcase.

  The last thing she packed was a picture she’d taped to the door. It was a picture of Bailey in the hospital not too long before she died. Mrs. Graffman had given it to Tibby when she’d come for the movie screening.

  It was hard for Tibby to look at. Even as she cherished it, she wanted to press it safely between two books on a high shelf and leave it there forever. But she promised herself she wouldn’t do that. She promised herself she would hang it on the wall of her room, no matter where she was. Because Bailey had understood what was real, and when Tibby saw Bailey’s face, she couldn’t hide from it.

  Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.

  —Matt Groening

  The mass for Bapi was held in the plain and lovely whitewashed church Lena had visited many times last summer. The service was all in Greek, naturally, including her father’s e
ulogy, which left Lena to her own memories and meditations of Bapi.

  She held Grandma’s hand tightly and yearned for a glimpse of Kostos. He would be terribly sad, she knew that much. While she had only had the chance to love Bapi for one summer, Kostos had known him almost all his life. Lena had observed the subtle ways Kostos looked out for Bapi as he grew older and more feeble—hauling the garbage, replacing the roof tiles—while still making Bapi feel manly and respected.

  Lena wanted to share this with Kostos. He was one of the very few people who knew what Bapi meant to her. No matter what it was that had come between them, they could be close today, couldn’t they?

  Toward the end of the service, Lena caught sight of him at last. He was across the aisle from her family, on the far side, wearing a dark suit, and mostly obscured by his grandfather. Was Kostos looking for her, too? Here they were, in a small church on this tiny island on such a day. How could he not?

  Lena and her family were the last members of the solemn recession. They followed the priest through the big doors and into the churchyard, where the entire congregation had gathered to pay respects, one by one, to Grandma the widow. How strange it would be, Lena mused numbly, to wake up for thousands of days as a wife, and this one day to wake up as a widow.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Lena got a clear view of Kostos, and he, presumably, of her. She was struck by the stiffness of his posture. Usually the air around him seemed to buzz with his animation, but today it seemed perfectly still. His eyebrows were drawn down so far she could hardly see his eyes.

  For some reason, Lena had failed to notice at first gaze the woman standing next to Kostos with her hand clamped on his elbow. She looked to be in her early twenties. Her hair was highlighted blond and her skin was yellowish against the black of her suit. Lena didn’t remember ever having seen her before.

  This began a dull pounding inside Lena’s chest. She knew somehow that the woman wasn’t part of his family or a close family friend. She could just tell. Lena stood there, hoping Kostos might wave or beckon her over, or notice her in any way, but he didn’t. She waited alongside her grandma, kissing and shaking hands, and nodding to a lot of heartfelt sentiments she couldn’t specifically understand.

  Though his grandparents were among the first to hug and kiss Valia, Kostos waited until almost the very end. The sky had clouded over darkly and the churchyard had emptied by the time he approached, with the blond woman still at his side.

  Awkwardly Kostos hugged Grandma, but they said nothing to each other. The blond woman timidly pecked Grandma on the cheek. Lena stared at this unfamiliar woman, and she stared back at Lena. Lena waited for some sort of greeting or introduction, but it didn’t come. Grandma’s mouth made a straight line across her face. Lena felt confused, and slightly panicked at the strangeness on all sides.

  The priest, who had hovered kindly throughout the proceedings, seemed to sense the social breakdown. He knew enough English to want to facilitate.

  “Kostos, you must know Valia’s son and daughter-in-law from America.” He gestured toward Lena’s parents standing a few feet away. “And Valia’s granddaughter?” He gestured from Kostos to Lena and back again. “Lena, do you know Kostos and his new bride?”

  Bride.

  The word flew around Lena’s ears like a mosquito, diving and threatening before it bit her. And then it bit her.

  She looked at Kostos, and finally, he looked at her. His face was all different. As his eyes met hers, knowing and seeing her at last, her vision began to fuzz at the edges.

  Lena sank down to the ground. She put her forehead to her knees. She was vaguely aware of her mother’s worried hands on her back. Dimly she felt Kostos’s alarm as he broke his stiff posture to reach for her. Lena’s basic human instinct made her hang on to consciousness, even though it would have been a blessed relief to let it go.

  The bedroom was not big enough to contain her anguish. The house was not big enough. Lena wondered, as she stepped quietly out of the house and started up the darkening road, whether the sky would be able to hold it.

  She walked barefoot up the dusty road, not sure of her destination until she got up to the top, to the wide, flat expanse that spread from cliff to cliff. Numbly she set herself in the direction of the little olive grove. It was a place she and Kostos had shared, but she felt sure he had since abandoned it, as he had abandoned everything that was theirs, including her. There were many pointy, spiny things sticking into the bottoms of her tender, suburban feet, but that was okay with her.

  When she got to the grove, she hovered by the little olives as though they were her long-lost children. She stepped over the rocks and sat by the side of the pond, much diminished since last summer. The whole island was drier and yellower than it had been then.

  This was the place where it had all started. It seemed ceremonial to wash her sore feet and make her good-byes here too.

  She thought she’d be finishing it alone, but she heard the crackle of footsteps behind her. Her heart leaped, but not because she thought it was a criminal or a wild boar. She knew who it would be.

  He sat next to her, rolled up his funeral pants, and put his feet in the water next to hers.

  “You’re married,” she said, flat and numb.

  She clamped her jaw before she allowed herself to look at him. He was obviously pained and embarrassed and sorry and blah blah blah. So what.

  “She’s pregnant,” he said.

  Lena had been prepared to be remote and unmoved, but he had managed to ruin that for her too.

  She gaped at him with giant eyes.

  He nodded. “Her name is Mariana, and I went out with her three times after you broke up with me. The second time I had sex with her.”

  Lena winced.

  “I am a stupid bastard.”

  She had never heard him sound bitter like this before. She stared at him quietly. She didn’t have very much to add to that.

  “She is pregnant and I am at fault. So I am taking responsibility.”

  “Do you know it is …” She had trouble finishing the sentence. “… yours?”

  He looked at her levelly. “This is not America. This is an old-fashioned place. This is what a gentleman does.”

  She remembered when he’d used that word with her. She couldn’t help feeling, somewhat discordantly, that his efforts at being a gentleman were not adding to the overall happiness in his life.

  Slowly, looking at the water, Lena tried to reassemble the last few weeks, knowing all this.

  “Will you go back to London with her?”

  He shook his head. “Not for now. We’ll stay here.”

  Lena knew what a blow that was to him. He wanted to get off the island and make a life for himself in a bigger place connected to the bigger world. She knew he had always dreamed of that.

  “Do you live together?” she asked.

  “Not yet. She is looking for a place in Fira.”

  “Do you love her?” Lena asked.

  Kostos looked at her. He closed his eyes for a minute or two. “I could never imagine feeling about anyone the way I feel about you.” He opened his eyes to see her. “But I’ll do what I can.”

  Lena was going to cry soon. She knew she couldn’t keep this up for long. The reality was catching up fast, hard on her heels, gripping her wrists. She wanted to get away from him before it happened.

  She got up to leave, but he took hold of her hands and pulled her to him. With a stifled cry he crowded her to his chest with both arms around her, his mouth on her hair, his breathing rough.

  “Lena, if I’ve broken your heart, I’ve broken my own a thousand times worse.” She could hear that he was crying, but she didn’t want to look. “I would do anything I could to change this, but I can’t see a way out.”

  She let out an orphan sob, a small release as she struggled to hold the rest of it back.

  “I’ll let myself say this now, and not again. It goes against the commitment I made, but Lena, I have to
tell you this. Everything I ever said to you was true and is true. I didn’t lie. It’s truer and bigger and more powerful than you’ll ever know. Remember what I said.”

  His voice was desperate. He clutched her, almost too roughly. “You will go along, I know you will. And I will spend my whole life not having you.”

  She needed to get away. She pulled herself away from him and hid her face.

  “I love you. I’ll never stop,” he promised, just as he had done a few weeks before on the side-walk outside her house.

  That time it had been a treasure. This time it was a curse.

  She turned and she ran.

  Tibby agreed to get a pedicure. She had never pegged herself as a pedicure kind of girl, but her mother had wanted her to come, and it was hard to hate a free foot massage. Plus, as they sat side by side with their feet swirling in miniature Jacuzzis, Tibby realized this was the longest time she’d spent with her mom all summer long. Maybe that was the idea here. Maybe you had to tag along sometimes to get what you needed.

  Her mother chose dark red for her toenails. Tibby chose clear. But then she changed her mind and chose dark red too.

  “Sweetie, I wanted to show you something,” her mom said, pulling an envelope out of her purse.

  She unfolded the letter, handwritten on thick, fancy paper. “It’s from Ari.”

  Tibby winced. She thought of Lena, of course, and she also thought of the whole stupid blowup.

  “It made me cry,” Alice said, seeming to summon up a bit of wetness in the eyes to demonstrate. Tibby could tell it wasn’t a sad kind of crying.

  “Before they left for Greece, she wrote the dearest apology for the whole mess. She’s a sweet person. She always has been.” Alice’s face seemed to grow sentimental, and Tibby suddenly felt sentimental too.

  “I remember when you and Ari used to play tennis on Wednesdays against Marly and Christina, and you always took turns winning.”