When We Were Young

by Jaclyn Goldis

  “Yes! I’ll write my novel. I’ll be like Hemingway. And your brother will join us too.” Milos had met Benjamin, of course, once—insufficient to capture his kind, curious cleverness. But Sarah had regaled Milos with many Benjamin stories since. “Benjamin will write his own masterpiece. We’ll be the new literati.”

  “And what would I do?” Sarah teased.

  “We’ll have children,” Milos said, matter-of-factly. “A girl and a boy.”

  Children together. Sarah’s heart constricted at all the steps that would have to come before children. Her parents approving of them, to start.

  Tears sprang unexpectedly in her eyes. “I need to get home for my father’s birthday.”

  “So…this is—”

  “I wish you wouldn’t leave,” she blurted. “I wish so much you wouldn’t go.” Her stomach was unhappy with her, and it wasn’t just the metsovone. Milos had done something to it, mixed up all her chemistry.

  “This is only see you later,” he said firmly. “I’ll be back in the spring.”

  “The spring is forever away.”

  “I’ll miss you terribly. I want to be with you forever, Sarah mou.”

  Milos drew her to his chest, and for the first time she allowed herself to rest against it. His chest was sturdy and strong, just like she’d imagined, and she savored the sound of his heartbeat before some force outside of her lifted her head, and Milos bent down to kiss her. The kiss turned her inside out with its right-ness, like carving out a place that was now confusingly home. But she had another home, and the two could never merge.

  They kissed, hungrily then, until Sarah broke from him and ran along the sea now slashed with moonlight. She forced herself not to look back, making her legs cycle faster, and faster yet, to beat down the terrible knowing that had surfaced, as to which of her two homes she might now choose.

  * * *

  When Sarah returned home, she paused just outside her door, noticing that her knapsack was open. Her chest seized in fear as she rifled inside to discover that, sure enough, the metsovone was gone. It must have fallen out somewhere in her dash home, to make it on time for her father’s birthday. She considered turning back, retracing her steps, but chances were someone had found it, already delighting in their good fortune.

  Sarah stood outside the door, tears collecting in the corners of her eyes. Surely this was punishment for breaking off that piece of metsovone for her and Milos to eat. And a punishment for more, she realized with dread, for even carrying on with Milos. Sarah thought of her father’s unrelenting admonishments: how important it was to maintain their insular Jewish community; that she was not even to be friends with boys from the outside.

  But this punishment of the metsovone wasn’t fair! Because it affected her father, who in the rare instances Sarah had watched him eat it, closed his eyes in rapture as he did so.

  * * *

  That evening, after delicious stuffed tomatoes, grilled fish, and potato bourekas, Sarah sat on the floor beside the fireplace wedged between their two family beds, listening to her father strum his bouzouki. Her mind was an inferno of the metsovone incident, and then Milos and perhaps never seeing him again, but her father’s voice lent familiar cadence to her despondence.

  At first, he was murmuring, notes without words, and then he added some.

  And so it is.

  I am old.

  Life has been beautiful.

  “You’re not that old, Baba.” Her father was thirty-six, the same age as her mother.

  “If he is old, then what am I?” asked her mother, her blue eyes unusually teasing. She had finished the dishes and was now in an uncommon perch, sitting doing nothing on her bed, below her favorite framed painting of pink roses. Sarah, Benjamin, and their father would often pick her fresh bunches, sometimes competing to deliver the grandest assortment, because pink roses, both real and inanimate, proved the surest way to make her smile.

  “You are young, agapi mou,” said Sarah’s father. “You are young and beautiful forever. Come, Benjamin. Dance with me.”

  Sarah’s brother had lit the kerosene lamp and was now reading in the window nook with his beloved bunny rabbit, Penelope, in her cage at his feet. Her mother called the spot God’s window; in the daylight, you could see the buildings all nearly kissing with golden light spilling over the ceramic rooftops, but now just the crescent moon hung in view beyond the slats.

  “Dance?” asked Benjamin, clearly not eager to leave his book.

  “It is my birthday, and I wish to dance!”

  Sarah smiled in spite of her sorrow over the metsovone and Milos as her father began to hum the “Kokoraki,” an upbeat song about animals at a fair. Ki ki ri ki ki, he sang, bopping around their room with his eyes shut, so handsome in his nice black suit that he usually reserved for the Sabbath.

  Sarah loved seeing him happy because her father was the type of person whose pain sometimes got turned inside out for some time. His mother had died in childbirth when he was seven, and then his younger sister from tuberculosis when he was thirteen. He always said, I am happy. I have my wonderful family. But Sarah was too sensitive a person to accept it. Sometimes she gazed at her father and his ears that stuck out a bit, and she could see him as a child. And then she would feel unsure for a moment, about who between them was protecting whom.

  “I gave you ten drachmas for metsovone!” her mother said quietly, leaning down from the couch to Sarah’s perch on the floor. “We don’t have money, Sarah. You know this. And it’s even more dire with the war. On the mainland people are dying, Sarah. And here I saved money for your father’s metsovone.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mama. I…like I told you, it just fell out.” She hung her head.

  “You were careless, Sarah. Things don’t just fall out. When they are important, you pay close attention to them.”

  And Sarah didn’t say anything because she wholeheartedly agreed. She wished so badly she could turn back time and guard the metsovone with everything she had. Sarah watched her father dance and eventually coax Benjamin up too, and the pair of them went round and round their small little room, pausing with an Opa beside their handwritten family tree chart composed of concentric circles, like rings on an old tree. The chart was a tradition among Corfiot Jews, and Sarah had grown up on the stories behind the names written in careful script in each little box.

  Sarah closed her eyes and listened to their footwork resume and the loop of ki ki ri ki ki, and her thoughts shifted to Milos. Only to Milos.

  Chapter Eleven

  Joey

  Corfu

  2004

  They stood before the turquoise beach at Paleokastritsa, on Corfu’s western coast. The sky glowed in gradients of white. Taxi drivers hunched over a folding table, playing vigorous backgammon. Joey still had no clue why they were there.

  “I want to show you something, Jonesey!” Leo said, bouncing her arm.

  Leo led her through a maze of docks across the harbor. They stopped at a yacht that gleamed white and blue. “This is my yacht for the summer.”

  “Your yacht? What do you mean?” Her chest twitched with mild alarm. Some people loved surprise parties, which Joey couldn’t fathom. She liked time to prepare herself, and besides she was generally too hyper-perceptive for a surprise to work before she’d sniffed it out. But in this case, she hadn’t seen it coming. Leo’s yacht.

  “Come on, Jonesey. Let me give you a tour.” Without explaining, he hopped on and helped her over. She glimpsed the nameplate. APOLLO.

  Leo led her to an impressive salon adorned in Missoni throws and then down a flight of stairs. He pointed out the staterooms (tiny cabins best suited for midgets) and the galley (a kitchen the appropriate size for Lily to bake up some mean pretend brownies). Okay, Joey acknowledged her crankiness, but a sense of foreboding had gripped her. Leo mixed them screwdrivers, sprinkling words like gunwale and hawser with mounting enthusiasm.

  “Leo,” she said, after they’d returned to what he’d called
the stern, and he’d clarified that this meant the back of the boat. “What did you mean it’s your yacht?”

  “Oh.” Leo jumped off the boat and extended his hand. “The thing is, Jonesey, well…I’ve sort of been nervous to tell you this. I’m dropping out of Michigan.”

  “You’re what?” She stuck in place, and it took a few moments for the disorientation to lift. “Leo, wait up. Wait up, Leo!” She ran down the dock and turned him by his shoulder.

  “It’s not my thing, Jonesey. I gave it a try, and it wasn’t for me.”

  “What do you mean? College is for everybody.”

  “Not me.” Leo grimaced. “All that, Hey dude, hey bro, swallow this goldfish so we can be like brothers. Do pushups and don’t shower for a week. Now some sorority pledges are gonna whore it up for us! Pass me a cig, man. They’re all just so terrified someone’s going to figure them out.”

  “Figure what out?”

  “That they’re little babies inside. That they have no idea who the fuck they are, what the fuck they want, so they swallow goldfish to get people to be their friends. To validate them.”

  “Okay…” said Joey slowly. “So de-pledge your frat.”

  “I did de-pledge my frat. That’s not it, Jonesey. It’s all of college. These kids are just stupid. Privileged and stupid. They couldn’t give a shit about careers or having conversations about things that matter. All they care about is football, beer, and sex.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t care about sex?” Joey laughed a tentative laugh.

  “That, I do still care about.” Leo pulled her into a half embrace. “I misspoke, Jonesey. Please don’t think I’ve turned puritan on you.”

  “What are you going to do if you drop out? I don’t get it.”

  “This!” Leo gestured back to the boat, to the sea. The look on his face scared Joey. It was like the one he had sometimes when she came onto the terrace after a shower, all scrubbed with wet hair. “The captain, Dave is his name. He’s American too, actually. I met him last summer at the port in town. He’s based out of Monaco now—that’s the most sought-after port for charter boats. Dave’s in his fifties, but he also quit school when he was our age. He knew a life at sea was his passion. That boating was his passion. And lectures on calculus and Western Civ weren’t going to get him there.”

  Right now, Joey was internally cursing this Dave and all his passions. “So a life at sea is your passion?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Leo. “It is. It’s always been, if I think of it. I’m gonna help Dave with his boat now. He’s refitting it because some idiot guest took the wheel and rammed the boat onto a sandbar. So it’s kind of a lucky break.”

  “Lucky,” she said, unable to conceal her sarcasm.

  “Don’t be like that, Jonesey.” They’d reached the beach now, and Leo pulled her down to the sand. “Look at all this.”

  The waves discarded black detritus at the shore. A piece stuck to Joey’s foot. She touched it without removing it.

  “This is going to be my life now, J.”

  And Joey didn’t know what to say because she thought she was going to be his life now.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “Jonesey, this doesn’t change things for us.”

  She nodded, but she didn’t know what that meant. “So after this summer, you’re going to—”

  “The Caribbean, yeah. Monaco’s the dream, but Dave’s doing winter down in the Caribbean. It won’t be easy. I’m going to start at the bottom. A deckhand. I have a lot to learn, but I want to get my captain’s license and…” He couldn’t squelch a goofy grin. “I’m really excited, J.”

  “Did you tell your parents?”

  “Yeah.” His smile evaporated. “I told them in Michigan, before we left for Corfu.”

  Joey nodded, stung that he’d told them first but not wanting to make a deal out of it. “And what did they say?”

  “My father thinks it’s his fault. That he never should have given me the idea that boating is blissful. Because boating is a hobby.” Leo mimicked Rand’s lulling drawl. “A hobby you get to partake in once you become a success. And you only become a success if you go to college and get your MBA and prove yourself on Wall Street and then, of course, take over the family business.

  “You won’t be able to make a living and have a stable life, Leo.” Leo cast his eyes out to sea. “He’s hoping he can change my mind still. Get me back to Michigan. He’ll probably never do the Leo Winn thing again. Thank the Lord.”

  Joey laughed even though this was clearly not funny. “Leo what?”

  “You sound like a chain-smoking football coach.”

  “I said Leo what?” She had to keep going with the shtick or she was going to lose it. “I can’t hear you!”

  “Winn,” he said drily. “Leo Winn. Only now I’m a big fucking Loser to my father. It’s okay. I don’t care. I’m not him. I don’t want to be him.”

  “And Maisy? What did your mom say?”

  “Maisy.” Leo sighed. “Maisy said she’d forgotten something in her garden.”

  “Oh.” The sun was fiery on Joey’s shoulders, and yet she shivered. “But, like, Leo, I don’t get it.” She shaped sand into a mound and then punched it spontaneously with her fist. “If you do this, you’re gonna be living in the middle of oceans. And if we’re going to stay together…” The if part paralyzed her. She didn’t know how to continue.

  “We’ll figure it out, Jonesey. I don’t know how, but we will. I want to be with you. You’re the best part of my life. This doesn’t change that.”

  Joey nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  Leo touched her hat. “I like that you’re wearing the Jonesey hat.”

  “It hasn’t been the same since the strawberry gelato incident.” She tried to crack a smile but couldn’t force one out.

  She was in a mood, clearly. She remembered a day last summer. Lily had stepped on one of her paintings with the paint still wet. That had been beyond infuriating. And then Joey had gone to lunch with her mother and a strong wind had sent Bea’s skirt up to her chest, and it had been clear to Joey, and the whole of Liston, that Bea wore no underwear underneath. It had been really embarrassing, and the worst part was that Bea hadn’t even apologized! She’d maintained it was her right to exist sans lingerie at any time or place of her choosing. That actually she should be praised for unbinding the shackles of modern women. She’d had the audacity to suggest that Joey might find herself a little less uptight if she were to abandon her underwear too.

  Leo had been on the terrace when Joey got back. It had all been a swirl, a raging swirl, and Leo had said, “Sit down, Jones.” She’d sat. “Tell me,” he’d said.

  “I’m just…ugh at my mom and Lily!”

  “Okay, tell me more.”

  “If you really want to know, I feel all…like…annoyed…and down. Really angry. Distraught.” She’d felt herself getting even more riled up. There had been an overall feeling surging, a very particular one, that she hadn’t been able to wrap inside words. “I feel all zigzaggy.”

  “Yeah,” Leo had said, and she’d been able to tell by his voice he was taking her seriously, “zigzaggy. Sounds bad. So, which way is it zigging?”

  “Here.” She’d pointed to her chest and felt his hand settle on the part of her that was zigzagging like crazy in a downward motion, toward her left foot.

  Leo had said, “Is it still zigging?”

  She’d said, “It’s zagging now, really fucking sharp.”

  And he’d said, “I can feel it,” and so they’d sat like that for a little, as the zigzags came, and she’d felt like they were attached to a string and there was someone outside her pulling at the string, unfolding the zigs and the zags until they settled in a straight calm line and ejected right out of her, landing in a heap at her left foot.

  She’d been so grateful then to have her person—the one she could tell about all the strange things that lived inside her.

  But that had been last s
ummer. And right now on the beach at Paleokastritsa, Leo didn’t feel like someone she could tell about her zigzags. He felt like a person vanishing right before her eyes. They’d had plans—finishing college and then moving to the same city. New York probably, because its urban possibility was so far from their sleepy hometowns in Florida and Michigan. But maybe on reflection now, those had been her plans, and Leo had never seemed sure about a settled-down life.

  “Hey, Jonesey, why don’t we go swimming?”

  “I don’t feel like swimming.” Joey looked at her sketchbook. She looked at Leo. “How about I sketch you?”

  “Sure, Jonesey.” Leo retrieved their towel from the beach bag and laid it on the sand. Joey dug in the basket for a pencil. She selected a 0.3-millimeter one. Demetris said it was a good starting pencil. It left only a thread of a line.

  That was all Joey felt herself capable of now. A thread of a line.

  Leo stared off at the mountain sloping over the turquoise bay.

  “Look straight at me,” she said.

  “Really? When you sketched that woman at Lacones, you had her turn her cheek to the side.”

  Joey flicked her pencil back and forth, a warm-up for her fingers. “What I’ve learned, Leo, is that I’m really good at figure drawings. That woman at Lacones staring at the castle, her face was in shadows. The mother and son in Liston walking toward the Spianada. No faces. Only backs. The only face that interests me in the slightest is yours.”

  “Understandable.” Leo sucked in his cheekbones and swiveled his head comically. “It’s a pretty stunning face.”

  “I’m serious, Leo.” She debated saying the thing that had plagued her of late with her art. “I’m afraid something’s wrong with me.”

  “Yeah, Jonesey? What’s that?”

  She finally said, “I think I can only sketch the face of the person I love.” She was glad she had her sunglasses on.