by Leona Theis
She lifted a hand to indicate the play of sun on the waves, the silver-green of the olive trees nearby. “This. I mean all this.”
“And then, your mood when you are seeing it. I cannot know from the outside what you are feeling.” He walked away, softly singing.
Sylvie saw how Will’s hands had slackened around the napkin he’d been wringing. Skeletal, was the word she lit on. Those strange but familiar hands had a skeletal beauty. She sensed a ticking down inside the man.
“I wanted to see you, that’s all,” he said. “Friend of my youth. It’s grounding.”
“I’m glad it’s that. I’m glad you stalked me here.” His thin arms, motionless. She smiled to coax a smile from him. It worked. “Will you take me to Hell again?”
“Yes, tomorrow. Today, the beach.”
They followed their instincts along a bumpy road. Not knowing the name of the beach they found, they christened it Paradise. Like Hell, it was populated only sparsely. A middle-aged couple were getting it on in the shade of the cliff that rose to one side of the cove. An extended family had scattered blankets, wide-brimmed hats and flapping towels across the sand. A naked baby crawled toward the surf. A woman Sylvie guessed to be roughly her own age slathered a toddler with sunblock. Grandchild? She imagined the smooth feel of the young skin under the woman’s hand. Sylvie was not, to her knowledge, a grandmother.
She and Will took turns changing into swimsuits between a bush and a held towel. They left their things in a heap, took a quick dip in the calm water of the cove and then stood, feet burrowed to find the coolness underneath the hot surface of the sand. A cypress that had taken root on a ledge partway up the cliff leaned out in profile against the blue sky. Sylvie pulled the sparkling dress from her shoulder bag, careful to leave the ceramic sheep nestled there next to the drawstring pouch. She shook the dress once and slipped it on. At forty-nine she was still happy to wear a brief bikini, but only briefly. The dress turned a darker green where wetness plastered it slick against her suit, showing, she hoped, the results of thirty years of fidelity to yoga and other salutary practices. Let the mentor-seeking young scholars take note. Jug feathers! Aunt Merry would say if she were to hear that thought. Aunt Merry, Sylvie’s own mentor since childhood, though neither of them had ever used that word.
Will’s wet body as he stood on the beach was doughy around the middle. Grey curls in a patchy pattern between his shivered nipples. Only that single time had he taken her in his arms when they were young, just the one occasion on the landing at the top of her outside staircase. Pulled her to him, held her ass in his warm hands for a couple of seconds, then let her go and said good night. Afterward they’d carried on as if it hadn’t happened. She’d never lost that moment. Over the years she’d coaxed it into the present with a frequency that would surely surprise him.
He pulled his T-shirt on, still inside out. Rubbed a hand across his chest. “Itching me,” he said, and he took it off and turned it right-side out. I HAVE BEEN TO THE GATES OF HELL, it read. “Whatever kind of plastic transfer they used. Irritating. We’ll go back tomorrow, you can buy your own.”
“Land of the dead.”
“Sylvie, I have to tell you.” He was looking down, watching the slither of sand as he wiggled a big toe. “I lost so many friends in the early years, before the drugs got better.” He tightened his starfish beach towel round his waist.
Sylvie swallowed. She looked at his profile, thinking again how he looked less than himself. “Oh, Will.” Taking the hem of her dress in her hands, she twisted the fabric hard, wringing a drop or two of seawater onto the sand. “Will, I’m sorry.” She wove her fingers through his, used her other hand to stroke his forearm, elbow to wrist, in a soothing motion.
“I’m positive,” he said.
“How long have you known?”
“July 21, 1995.”
“That’s nine years, almost.”
“But who’s counting?” He leaned toward her, and she held him. “So-far-so-good.” He said it rapidly, as if to get it out before the facts would change.
“Oh, Will.”
“So many funerals. I stopped counting years ago.”
MORNING. Breakfast at Villa Stavros was served outdoors on a high terrace. They looked over the tops of cedars toward the patch of beach where earlier they’d spent forty-five minutes practising asanas, alone together. The wind blew their paper napkins off the table. In keeping with the rites of purification and preparation before a pilgrimage to an oracle, Sylvie ate nothing. “Good decision,” said Will. “Best not to have anything in your stomach. It would only come back up once the nausea sets in, which it’s bound to do once you drink my special tea.”
He ate his yogurt and avocado, his white bread, swallowed three pills and chased them with bottled water. They’d lain together all night on the narrow bed in Will’s room fully clothed — talking, sleeping, singing a little, intimate but not — and woken side by side and calm. He peeled an orange and the scent burst toward her. A drop of juice landed on her wrist and sparkled, then itched. She licked away the drop, tasting sweet and salt. “Breakfast.” She was nervous, waiting.
“I wonder what sort of person your girl’s turned out to be.”
“I wonder too.” She liked to imagine a face that resembled the young Aunt Merry in black and white photos from the fifties, her wide smile tilted with mischief. “If not for you, she’d never have been born.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“If I hadn’t picked up that copy of The Prophet you left behind at my place, if I hadn’t used it as an excuse to find you at yoga and return it, I don’t think I would have —”
“I’m glad you came that day, but I won’t take credit for your decision.”
“You should. You were there for me.” Then, trying on the idea of active motherhood, something she’d been taking tentative steps toward for weeks now, she said, “For her and me.” She stared at the sea and counted four small boats, white-sailed. Which sort of beauty was this? Heartbreaking? Joyful? Either way, it was powerful enough she had to look away for a moment. She reached a hand and touched Will’s temple, fingered his hair. “I’ve always loved your curls. So handsome, the way they’re silvering.”
“You’re sweet. Sweeter than you used to be.”
Sylvie: Look: you apply yourself. You do everything in your power to make your work exceptional, and with a little luck the work will get noticed. Sometimes the validation will come only from inside yourself. You will know when you measure up. And you’ll know when you don’t. If you’re honest. [Silence.]
Student: Thank you, Dr. Fletcher, for some very, um, helpful thoughts. Now [turning to her left], let’s hear from Dr. Yiannakis.
THE PARKING LOT at the Nekromanteion was mercifully deserted. Inside the walls they passed a terracotta pot reconstituted from dozens of shards glued back together and placed in a metal stand. Sylvie pointed as they passed it. “Reunited.” Will smiled.
As soon as the conference organizers had invited her to Ioannina, she had begun to imagine this side-trip. She’d done her homework and she was ready with a mix of milk and honey she’d coaxed after breakfast from the cook at Villa Stavros and poured into the plastic bottle she’d brought from home. She had two small stones from the courtyard outside her condo in Vancouver to throw at hostile spirits should any appear. Now, thanks to Will and his mushroom tea, she wouldn’t have to resort to a dubious Gravol high. The ancient pilgrims were granted their audience with the dead only after extended preparations and purification — sensory deprivation, fasting, exhaustion, hallucinatory concoctions made from beans and lupin seeds. They stood on a patch of grass on the rocky hillside and Will handed her the thermos. “Anything lupins do, this can do better.”
She nearly dropped it. She hadn’t indulged in so much as a toke in twenty years.
“Second thoughts?”
“Those ancients went through days and days of rites.”
He laughed and touched the thermos with a
fingertip. “Trust me, this will feel like days. Go now, find a spot. I’ll stay close by. Don’t worry, this is a good place. For me too. I have many friends here.” He made a half smile and slid a bottle of water into her free hand, then bowed and backed away. She found a grassy space further along the hillside and sat cross-legged among the dandelions and daisies. Looked back at Will, who sat with his back to a cyclopean wall. She drank. Took the shiny raku sheep from her shoulder bag and set it on a stone to her right, at the ready. The small photograph of Aunt Merry, too, at the ready, tucked under the sheep. She drank again.
THE GRASS ALL AROUND was a softly rolling sea, and Sylvie afloat. Despite Will’s effort to mask the flavour by adding a bag of orange spice from Celestial Seasonings, the tea in his thermos — she’d downed more than half of it — carried a lingering tang akin to sour dirt. She swallowed water past a swell in her throat and used what yoga had taught her about breath to quell the nausea. Her bones felt small inside her body but heavy too, in a pleasant way, as if they’d found their way home from a four-day walk and were settling back in. She felt watched over and at the same time stomach-sick. Mixed feelings, she thought, and she would’ve giggled but giggling seemed redundant.
Was she worried about something? No, but her body seemed to think so. Tightness in her chest, and then a gradual softening. She watched the waves of the rolling sea around her. She’d been afloat for hours now, or minutes. She slipped the photo from where she’d tucked it underneath the sheep. Looking into Aunt Merry’s eyes she saw that she didn’t have to ask out loud, she just had to look at her aunt’s face, which was moving a little but not in the way a face moves when a person speaks. It was simply alive in a lovely way, more physically lovely than Merry ever had been in her time on Earth. Sylvie knew, then, that her aunt lived inside her. As all of Earth lived inside her, and all of her own life past and to come, and the unknown life of her lost daughter. All of these together, there was no separation. She set the photo down and weighted it with the lid from the thermos, opened the plastic bottle, spilled milk and honey in an arc around Aunt Merry and watched as it dripped through the weave of grass and sank into the ground.
Journey to the Underworld. Tired old trope. She laughed, and the commotion the laughter caused made her want to vomit. She heard Aunt Merry inside her: What is it, then, dear? I haven’t got all day.
I should look for her. Should I?
If you’re ready.
Maybe she’s registered. To say she’s willing. Has she registered, Aunt Merry?
You don’t need an oracle to answer that, all you need’s a telephone.
Should I do this, then?
Aunt Merry sighed an exasperated sigh, clouds of steamy breath rising from the shimmering photograph. You already know the answer. A breeze tugged at the photo, threatened to free it from the slight hold of the thermos lid.
Sylvie nodded, and tears of relief dropped into the green ocean around her. You’ve always helped me decide what to do.
I’ve been your sounding board, that’s all. I’ve never told you a single thing you haven’t already sorted out.
Aunt Merry? What I really want to know is … could you tell me what’s ahead? Only just a little? A clue?
That’s not my job, honey. I will say this: It’s a tragedy how late you’ve left it.
Yes. Her daughter would be twenty-nine. Sylvie looked at her hands and saw that she was cradling the sheep. She ran her thumb over the rough raku. How long had she been holding that bit of fragility? She faced toward the stone on the hillside and raised the sheep above it.
Saint Peter in a puddle, Sylvie, what the hell are you about to do?
Odysseus — when he came he slaughtered a black lamb and a black ewe. A sacrifice.
Aunt Merry laughed. That’s a perfectly good tchotchke, my girl. Have you got a present for her?
Not yet.
Well?
With this final question Aunt Merry’s photo escaped the small weight of the lid. Sylvie rocked the sheep in her hands and watched the picture skip away, thought how Merry would enjoy the dance across the ocean of grass and into the blue sky. She watched until it disappeared in the direction of Corfu. The hillside was empty, eerie. Will’s here, she thought. Behind me, leaning against the wall. He needs me. He needs me, and she needs me. Sylvie tried — thought she tried — to turn to see Will, but her body, when she checked, had failed to move.
LATER, IN THE CAR, she held the sheep in her lap along with the pebbles she’d brought in case of hostile spirits. They made small clinks against each other as the car jiggled along the rough road. She tried to tell Will how Merry was still and always inside her, lobbing Sylvie’s own answers back in response to her questions. As she had always done. Was that some form of wisdom, what she managed with her dead aunt?
“Jeez, Sylvie, don’t study it, just let it be. You’re still bemush-roomed, and it’s such a fine day, and this is a stunning place.”
“Why are we taking the long way back? I need to get to Ioannina.”
“Because you’re taking the long way back. You won’t land for hours yet, not fully. We’ll drive a little, find the shore, watch the sun go down.”
“What about you, will you visit the dead? Will you, Will?” She found her own phrasing hilarious.
“Yes, in fact, tomorrow while you cavort with scholars. We’ll compare notes afterward, over dinner.”
“I’ve said too much already.” She winked. “If you talk about your visit to the Underworld, Hades demands your own life in exchange.”
“You think I’m scared to mess with Him?”
They took a curve and screeched to a stop to avoid driving into a herd of sheep milling on the road. Sylvie opened the door and vomited a pale wet thread onto the gravel.
“That’s my girl.”
The last of the bleating sheep left the road. As Will put the car in gear Sylvie pulled her door shut and opened her window all the way for air. “How will you find the shore?”
“Drive toward the sun till the land runs out. But let’s talk about what’s important here. Let’s talk about how you’ll find her.”
“Yes, yes!” Never until this moment had Sylvie found a use for the word rapture. That was the word for what she felt now. Rapture with a silver dusting of anxiety. Would she be welcomed or spurned?
“Look left,” said Will. “Pretty little shrine.”
Another curve obscured by oleander and sunlit dust and now a truck coming their way, high speed and almost as wide as the road itself. Sylvie thought, Will I ever know what she looks like? and then impact. The two small pebbles fell through her fingers. The ceramic sheep flew out the window and tumbled through oleander striking leaf after flower after leaf.
SHE WAS ON HER BACK on pebbled ground, lying in a long cold shadow cast by … what? Her body was small and heavy at the same time. The air was silent but for the ting and tick of metal settling. She was far from home. Where? Someone called her name. Again. She would answer, soon. He was saying something else now. She turned her head and saw a shiny object the size of her closed fist, cradled on a tuft of wild grass.
Things He Will Not Tell Her Daughter
NO DOUBT Mavis will have her own ideas about what to tell Sylvie’s daughter, should they ever track her down. What those ideas might be, Will can’t begin to guess — he’s known Mavis only three days now. Her mere existence had come as a surprise, and her features a witching, so familiar but in a squarish face and framed by hair brassy with highlights. A sister Sylvie had never once mentioned. Of course not. Their friendship happened back when both were shedding themselves of family, hometowns, high school.
“We were always close,” Mavis said after she introduced herself, meaning, he supposed, that a person of any importance would know of her.
That encounter was days ago, but its keen point still digs. “Ah,” he’d managed, “I’m so sorry for your loss. How hard this must be.” His impulse to reach his arms around this person so similar to Sylvie in heigh
t, gesture, even the askew angle of the eyetooth on the left. To grasp the life of her and hold it. “I am so, so sorry, Mavis.” Her flinch, though, under even the light touch of his palm on her shoulder, the little nub of bone under the seam of her blouse a small declaration.
He won’t see those almost-Sylvie eyes again until the funeral. Mavis isn’t on this plane, she’ll catch a later flight, the one that will bring the body home to Canada. That weight, at least, he’s out from under. He uncrosses his legs and flexes an ankle to relieve the numbness, often there but worse on planes. The mp3 player that’s been lying forgotten on his lap slips off and dangles. Its small jerk at the end of the cord tugs at his headphones, and the muscles in the back of his neck jump. He pulls the player up and lets it drop back onto his thigh. He hasn’t even turned his music on, wears the phones only to discourage the young girl in the next seat from asking why is his arm in a sling and what about the bandage on the side of his head. Though he’s not without experience in deciding what to say and what to leave out — in the early years especially. It’s just a rash; it’s only a cold; a little flu, it’ll pass. Incomplete. As is he, by now. There was a time, in his Seattle years, when he’d attended a funeral every week for two months running. With each, another swathe of his personal history thinned out for lack of a person to share memories with. Who was he, anymore?
WHEN HE RECONNECTED WITH SYLVIE in Greece, wanting to impress this woman who had somehow become a prof in the decades since he’d last seen her, he’d let her believe he had a primarily editorial role at the micro enterprise that was Moonlit Publishers, but in fact his tasks are humdrum — sometimes proofreader, hard-drive troubleshooter, invoicer/shipper, window washer even. One true thing he told her, late in the night to the sound of the sea, was that from time to time he writes the copy that goes on the website and the backs of the books. “Bumf, it’s called. People don’t know where that word came from. Bet you don’t.” She didn’t. “Short for bum fodder. Toilet paper.” She let out a scoffing little laugh that called back to the time when they were close. There she was: Sylvie — a new version of her, but the girl he’d known still there to glimpse, and to offer glimpses of himself.