When We Were Young

by Jaclyn Goldis

  Joey smoothed her fluorescent-green tee, excited for Leo to see her wearing it again. Leo hated the color. Despised it. He believed fashion-oriented neon to be a bastard of those shades of green that arose in the natural order. He’d said it like gospel one summer, when that botany book was his fifth appendage and he’d scrutinized leaves and trees so that a walk to the sea could swallow the morning.

  So naturally, Joey’s old, worn, neon shirt got a lot of wardrobe mileage in teasing him.

  Joey was sitting at the long glass table that was the center point of their lives, atop the chair with the bad leg. When she shifted, the chair rocked. Her feet met the stone ground, wet with afternoon rain. She opened her hefty paperback copy of Anna Karenina. She’d been reading it for two years, always in Corfu between the hours of six and seven in the evening. That was when Maisy and sometimes Bea prepared dinner.

  Maisy was once a literature major at Barnard. She thought it was crucial that young women read. That was how they absorbed a slice of wider society. That was how they grabbed feminism by the horns.

  Whenever Maisy spotted Joey reading, she said, “Good for you, Josephine. We’ve got dinner.”

  Of course, Joey never confided that half the time she read was spent returning to page one. The terrace was too distracting for immersing herself into literature, especially by the Russians. Someone was always pulling up a chair and slipping a glass into your hand, so Joey would lose her place and return to the first page, starting from the famous happy and unhappy families line that she knew by heart. Today she stuck on that line, reading it a few times in unusual contemplation. She decided that her family was happy, despite their quirks, her mother’s in particular. As to Leo’s family, Joey’s gut said they weren’t happy, not as an organism unto the three of them. This was a sad, sobering thought, but in the summers, the Abrams and Winn families became one. So the happy family would lift up the unhappy one, right? Or maybe that was just something a person from a happy family could think.

  Maisy slid a glass of white wine into Joey’s hand, snapping Joey out of her analysis.

  “Oh, thanks, Mais! Can I do anything?”

  Maisy sipped from her tumbler, depositing an imprint of red lips on the glass. “Nope. I got it! You know I’m back in my element now.”

  Maisy loved to helm dinner, with Bea as her occasional sous-chef. Each of Maisy’s summer days passed in a Groundhog Day–flavored loop. What happened was that Maisy would rouse around eleven, waiting out the siesta with some light Mary Kay work and Sex and the City DVDs. As the gal pals clinked their Cosmos on the screen, Maisy would nurse in unity her own drink or, as Joey suspected, by the culmination of the day’s reruns, her own four or five. Then, once the shops reopened, Maisy would spend hours perusing and considering. Giorgios had the best seafood. Polermos for cheese. Ionna for baklava. After unloading all her spoils, Maisy would pour herself a tumbler and set to work on the night’s feast. Coq au vin. Beef bourguignon. Sometimes she’d tackle a Greek specialty like spanakopita or pastitsada or cheese souvlaki with a drizzle of thyme honey. The latter was Leo’s favorite. Joey pictured him saying, Are you sure you want another piece, Jonesey? The honey tastes off tonight.

  Down by the water, the clock tower began to chime. Sometimes it chimed once, sometimes eleven times, sometimes an incessant series where you had to stop counting because the chimes were going too fast and berserk. Clock tower guy forgot his meds today, was their common refrain.

  Joey and Maisy counted together up to five. They laughed.

  Maisy leaned over to check on one of her new plants. The Winns had arrived in town a few days before the Abrams family because Joey’s father had an important meeting that couldn’t be pushed, and in the interim, Maisy had adorned the terrace in terra-cotta planters. She’d announced that gardening was her new hobby, with her aim to grow ingredients for the families’ meals.

  The breeze played in the pleats of Maisy’s black dress. “This one’s gonna be basil.”

  “Ooh. Yum. I like what you’ve done, Mais.” Joey gestured to the pots. “It makes it even prettier out here.”

  Maisy smiled. “I thought it would be nice. I love plants.”

  “That must be where Leo gets his obsession from.”

  “Oh! That’s funny. Didn’t ever put it together. Genetics, huh?”

  Joey laughed. Her mind flickered with the conversation she and Leo had eavesdropped upon the summer prior, but she pushed that memory back down.

  “My garden in Michigan is where I do my praying, so I thought I’d make one here too.”

  “Praying? Like to God?” Joey was surprised. It seemed a little off-brand for Maisy, with her pert nipples shimmering through her slip dress, that Joey was trying to avoid looking at, and her penchant for a couple of drinks too many.

  Maisy nodded vaguely. “Where’s Leo, by the way?”

  Joey still loved that she was the person anyone asked when they wanted to find Leo. They’d been together nearly a year, but so much of it had been apart that they felt shiny new. Or maybe they would always feel shiny new. Joey knew with a gut conviction that, given their natural chemistry and ease, they were starting ahead of other relationships somehow. And moreover, they’d been friends from childhood, a special bond that other couples could rarely achieve.

  She’d heard parents of her single girlfriends foist advice about giving a guy another chance. Always accepting a second date. Like, love can grow. Attraction can mount. Joey had felt a little guilty telling her roommate to, sure, go on that second date with a guy she didn’t really have the desire to kiss. Because inside Joey had cringed, grateful and maybe even smug that it wasn’t her situation. The world paused anytime she saw Leo, and that fact hadn’t changed in the ten years she’d known him.

  “Leo’s down at the boat,” Joey said. “He’ll be back any moment, I’m sure.”

  Sure enough, Joey caught the silhouette of Leo slipping onto the terrace. Her whole body gave off a little sigh.

  “Ah, there’s my boy.” Rand slapped Leo’s shoulders as he crossed the terrace. Then Rand bent down to scoop up Jefferson the Cat. That was another thing he and Maisy had done this summer before the Abramses’ arrival: adopt Jefferson the Cat and bestow upon him his mouthful of a moniker. Jefferson the Cat had gray-striped fur and green eyes and an objectively ugly face, but Maisy and Rand were obsessed. They spoke to Jefferson the Cat in this bizarre French-accented baby voice.

  Leo draped an arm over Joey’s shoulder. “That shirt is blinding me, J.”

  Joey laughed. She peered back. Leo was wearing his board shorts and a white Michigan tee, a tsitsimpira ginger beer in hand. He looked the happy way he always did after he’d been tinkering on Rand’s sailboat. His freckles were extra prominent against his tanned skin. That was the telltale sign.

  Tomorrow Joey would go to see her art teacher, Demetris. Painting with Demetris made her happy too, a different kind of happy than Leo did. Demetris was Joey’s freckles-inducing equivalent.

  Maisy set lamb kebabs on the table. They rested in a ceramic evil eye platter with concentric rings of alternating blues and greens, in the center of which was a black circle. The edges of the platter cradled grilled pita, tzatziki, grilled onions and tomatoes, and fried potatoes with rosemary.

  “Nice, lovie.” Rand plucked a fried potato.

  Maisy set out a few ramekins with sea salt and herbs. “I was just waiting for a new batch of lamb. Perfect timing for the Abramses’ arrival.”

  “Stavros killed the little lamb this morning,” joked Leo, reaching for a kebab.

  “Mary’s little lamb?” asked Lily. She’d been tapping her spoon against the glass table like it was a drum. Now she looked up with really wide, curious, innocent eyes.

  “Not Mary’s little lamb, little L.” Leo laughed.

  “What lamb?” Lily appeared less interested than the two seconds prior.

  “Steve the lamb.” Leo mussed Lily’s wild red curls. “Never met Mary the Lamb. From very different far
ms.”

  That seemed to satisfy Lily. She went back to spoon drumming.

  “Cut it out, Lily,” said Bea.

  Lily drummed harder. Her toddler superpower was that she could continue doing anything in the face of admonishment. Bea wrestled Lily for the spoon. By the time she wrenched it away, she was sweating. Lily leaned back with an amused look.

  “Steve the lamb?” Joey giggled. “I’ll send you my sister’s therapy bills.”

  “To family.” Scott lifted his glass. “My favorite day of the year is when we’re all back on this terrace together. Yia mas. To a summer we’ll never forget.”

  “Yia mas,” they all echoed.

  Joey put her hand into Leo’s. Her body felt like it was quaking with joy. “To a summer we’ll never forget, Winn.”

  Something flickered across Leo’s face; Joey wasn’t sure what. But then he reverted to his typical smile with a bit of mischief inside it, like his ten-year-old self was never far. He clinked his wineglass against hers.

  “Or to a summer we’ll forget, Jonesey. Maybe those are even better.”

  * * *

  After dinner, Joey and Leo went to the pebble-spackled beach near the New Fortress, by the trees that looked like pineapples. (Date palms, Leo said.) In the day, you had to jostle for a spot to lay your towel. In the evening, there were no towels—only cameras. But once the sun eased under after its last plum tones, all the people who came, not to look at the sunset, but to capture the sunset, filed out.

  Leo tore off his shirt. Joey’s eyes lingered on his back, her favorite male body part, besides eyes, of course. Leo’s back was strong, hairless, nicely medium-size, and sporting the first hints of a tan. He was like a radiator, she’d told him the summer prior. Good for winter. She’d finally confirmed it was true when he’d visited her at Penn for Halloween weekend, their first taste of winter together. They’d dressed up as tennis players, both fine to go the route of a cop-out costume because neither got the appeal of spending time and money on anything elaborate. Then they’d left the party early and made hot chocolate back at her dorm, and after some TV show she hadn’t paid attention to, Joey had drifted into a warm sleep, her face pressed against Leo’s back.

  “Check out who’s here,” said Leo, and Joey followed his finger point to Nikos, the gorgeous, infamous-on-the-island son of the owner of the taverna neighboring their apartments, who was mid-flirtation with a pretty brunette.

  “Oh God.” Joey laughed. Tourists tended to flock to Nikos’s black hair and dark skin and dimples that didn’t discriminate by age. Joey had watched his dimples flash for fifteen-year-old acne-riddled girls and just as deeply for all the grandmas clad in black. Nikos had a whole shpiel for presenting the taverna’s olive oil, proclaiming it the best olive oil in Greece, the best in the whole world. But the olive oil was actually from the Aegean.

  Joey knew this because she’d had a little thing with Nikos before she and Leo had gotten together, and Nikos had confided the secret.

  “Think he’s doing his olive oil demonstration?” Leo winked.

  “Who knows.” Joey laughed. “Who cares.”

  Joey knew Leo wasn’t actually jealous, and she both loved and sort of resented that. She loved his confidence, how he moved so assuredly in his body, inhabiting it like something he would have chosen even had he been consulted before his birth. Joey didn’t feel that way about her body, so connected to it, and surely not so in love with it. It was fine, but she found herself noticing her trouble spots more, especially when the magazines told her how to conceal them. But maybe that was just a girl thing. Either way, Leo’s confidence extended to their relationship. He knew that Joey was his. And while he gave her no reason at all to doubt that he was hers, she didn’t feel the same nonchalance toward the French girl with big boobs whom Leo had dated a couple of times before he and Joey had gotten together. Leo had explained it to Joey: He’d wanted to kiss Joey long before the prior summer, but he’d waited so long to do it because he was terrified of ruining the special bond they had. Nonetheless, whenever Joey saw the French girl, at the Pirate Bar or wherever—Corfu was small—she felt a twinge of jealousy.

  Leo dove out to sea from the most treacherous point. He always chose the spot slippery from moss and rising above punishing rock. As he disappeared below the waterline, Joey’s eyes met Nikos’s. He waved cheerily, and she waved back.

  Joey pulled out her sketchbook. She swept charcoal across paper as Leo’s arms knifed the water. She didn’t know what she was drawing.

  She started with a pair of evil eyes.

  * * *

  Joey’s fascination with evil eyes began when she was ten. Her first summer on Corfu. Her father took her to the narrow alleys of the old Jewish quarter where her grandparents grew up. He led her past a bunch of scorched buildings—partially demolished with black smoke burrowed into weathered white and yellow stucco. Then a square with refurbished buildings in rose and peach. A taverna on every corner. He wanted to show her the synagogue on Velissariou.

  “This is your history, Joey,” he said. “These are your people.”

  “I’ll wait outside,” she said.

  Her grandparents didn’t really talk about Corfu. But when Joey was nine, she was allowed to sleep over at her grandparents’ Delray Beach condo. The sleepover was a special occasion. Before it, her mother had forbade her to sleep away from home. This was because Joey’s grandfather, who grew up on Corfu, once knew a girl who slept over at a friend’s house. There was a fire in the house, and when the family escaped the house, they forgot the guest.

  Joey always said to her mother, “That doesn’t make sense,” and her mother said, “Maybe the friend slept in the guest room,” and Joey said, “Didn’t Grandfather live in a one-room apartment before the war?” because so was his storied youth, and her mother just said, in uncharacteristic strictness, “I am in charge,” and Joey said, “I’ll sleep in my friend’s room so they can’t forget me.” But Joey’s attempts to convince her mother never succeeded until her father finally said, “Bea, this no-sleepover thing is ridiculous. At least let her go to your parents.”

  Her mother obviously trusted Grandmama and Grandfather enough that, if there was a fire, they would not forget to grab Joey—especially Grandfather, Joey supposed, whose story had so spooked her mother. So this was how Joey landed at a sleepover replacement.

  The next morning, she was in their bathroom, looking for tissues. She found an empty tissue box under the bathroom sink. Inside was a picture of suitcases.

  Joey went to the kitchen where her grandmother was stirring a pot on the stove. “What is this, Grandmama?”

  Her grandmother turned and went very still in her yellow house robe. She said, “I don’t like talking about some things, Joey.”

  “Okay.” Joey put the picture back in the box and sat at the table with its window onto the front yard, where a neighbor boy was mowing the lawn.

  Her grandmother came over to the table and removed the picture from the box. She clasped it by the edges. “Joey, do you know Grandfather’s numbers on his arm?”

  “Yes.” Joey wiggled in her chair. She didn’t want to talk about her grandfather’s numbers, the ones that looked like black-and-blue marks. And she especially didn’t want to talk about her grandfather’s numbers when he was watching TV in the other room and could enter at any moment to chime in on the topic of his numbers. She dug her fingers into the box of Lucky Charms to find the mini Pez dispenser the front of the box promised.

  “Well, he got the numbers at a place called Auschwitz.” Her grandmother’s eyes looked like the eyes of the homeless woman who sat with her cat on the side of the clubhouse in her grandparents’ development and got delivered cups of ice water by the golf caddies.

  “I took this picture at that place. Auschwitz. I went in the sixties because my family was taken there. I had nothing of theirs. Of ours. I didn’t want to go to this place. Terrible things happened there. I went with a mission. I went to find things t
hey once had touched. Can you understand that?”

  Joey nodded yes, but no, she didn’t. She loved her grandparents an amount that was so big she could feel it inside her, in a place in her stomach that now pulsed, straining for its exit route. She didn’t want their lives to consist of some place called Auschwitz, and her grandfather’s numbers, and terrible things.

  “I went when your mother was young, alone. Your grandfather didn’t want to come. We’re different. He wanted to go back to Corfu, to show your mother the streets we once walked, the great synagogue we once prayed at. I wanted nothing to do with that version of the past. But I wanted a piece of my own past. My past was not in Corfu anymore. My past was in Auschwitz. I saw a room of hair. Can you imagine? Their hair was probably inside. My father’s. My mother’s. My mother had the most beautiful, shiny, dark hair. I didn’t see shiny, dark hair. It had been a long time. Maybe the hair got rotten.”

  Joey wondered why there existed in the world a room of rotten hair. Her forearm immersed in cereal, she finally felt the Pez dispenser. She pulled it out and licked the Lucky Charm coating off her fingers.

  Stop talking, she screamed inside.

  “Don’t lick your fingers, darling. It’s not a nice habit.” Her grandmother frowned. “So I went to another room. There were a million suitcases. A million. I spent hours in there. I walked inch by inch, looking for a name. My last name used to be Batis. And do you see it here?” Joey squinted. She saw it: BATIS. The suitcase was gray and square, like a large briefcase.

  “This is all I have of my family. A picture of their suitcase. They took it with them when the Nazis ordered them to gather in the scorching heat at the platia. That was a grassy area with walking paths between the Old Fortress and—”

  “Grandmama, my stomach hurts.” Joey pushed the photograph away, and as it flew off the table, she realized the magnitude of her action. She dove to catch it, but she was too slow, and the photo flopped onto the linoleum.

  By then, her grandmother had already bent over. She grunted. She brushed off the floor lint from the picture of the suitcases. Joey’s breath caught in her throat as she saw a patch on the upper right quadrant where she’d deposited Lucky Charm residue. She’d ruined her grandmother’s favorite picture.