The night felt more like fantasy than reality. Gus brought Calliope home and led her into the living room where he asked her to dance for him. She was still in her costume and willingly undulated before the picture windows with the moonglow behind her, framing her lithe body with a fractured spark that made him gasp. He enticed her with passionate Greek phrases as they shared a bottle of mavrodaphne, the sweet wine tipping their senses into a buzzing drone of hypersensitivity. Each touch felt like a searing push into their physical bodies, each kiss a challenge to their borders. They lost the ability to maintain their margins, lost all white space, and merged into a tangled mess of legs, heartbeats, and breath. Was it a sin? It had felt like one, and that made it all the sweeter.
Gus was startled from his reverie by the sound of Callie accidentally dropping her brush onto her dressing table. Her long red hair hung in seductive waves as she started to brush through it, the hair glistening more with each stroke. Even though he cared for her, and she was certainly beautiful, he felt conflicted about this life, this moment.
He sighed and wondered how he’d gotten caught so easily. How one evening, a few shots of ouzo, and a dance had gotten him a live-in lover, a baby, and a mother who was spinning out of control. He rubbed his eyes, his face, as if trying to wake up from a dream. But he’d already left dreamland and was entrenched in domestic disturbance. Damn those peanuts, he thought. Damn those peanuts and the ouzo, too.
• • •
Callie absentmindedly finished brushing her hair, thinking about the night, the dinner, Xeni, and their argument. Callie’s confusion seemed to be mounting by the day. She had been so focused on impressing Mrs. Horiatis that she felt like she was losing herself except when she was with Xeni. She found herself reaching for Xeni instinctively, as if seeing herself reflected in Xeni’s eyes was the only thing anchoring her to the Earth. And now Xeni was upset. Callie hadn’t noticed Xeni becoming angry or anticipated her eruption at the dinner table at all. She had to patch things up with her. It wasn’t because she needed her help to impress Mrs. Horiatis. It was because Callie could not risk losing Xeni.
Callie sneaked a peek at Gus. He was lying on the bed clutching an old copy of Time magazine with Barack Obama on the cover. His curly brown hair was still damp from his shower and hung on his forehead. She walked over and pushed a curl back. He didn’t seem to notice, his face caught in an expression of confusion. She put the lotion down on her bedside table and sat down on the bed next to him.
“Will you hold me?”
Gus’s eyes came back into focus. “Huh?”
“Will you hold me? I feel scared.”
Callie could sense Gus’s distance, but she curled up onto his chest anyway.
“Why are you scared?” he asked reluctantly.
“Well, Xeni is really mad at me. I don’t want her to be mad at me.” And silently, she said, I want her to love me.
“Yeah. You guys are friends, babe. It’ll be all right.” Gus started to take his arm away from her shoulders and yawned.
“I don’t want you to be mad at me either.”
“Callie, I’m not mad at you.”
“But what if you get mad at me?”
“For what?” Gus asked.
“I don’t know. Whatever.” I want her to love me.
“Well. What if you get mad at me?” Gus asked.
Callie turned to look at him. “Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don’t know.” Gus looked away.
Callie curled up tightly against Gus until they fell asleep, and then she dreamt that they were having the same dream, that they would stay together forever, and that they would both be very, very sad.
Mirage
My stomach feels so hollow. So empty. Is it possible to be filled with emptiness? Can it inflate your insides until they want to burst from the pressure? I don’t know what I was thinking. I must have been delirious from working in the kitchen, sweating out my good sense. I must have lost my judgment stirring the roux for the béchamel sauce, or fallen into a hot pan of butter, melted and burned. Manny, Manolaki, you are the one that brought me to this situation. But instead of finding pleasure biting your thigh or sucking your toes, I have fallen into a cooking pot of boiling water, sprinkled with flowers and flavored with one cinnamon-sprinkled Amerikanitha. The freckles across her nose travel down to her chest and lighten around her breasts, round and creamy as fresh mounds of mizithra cheese. It was one thing when I was helping Callie learn to cook, but what is this that is happening? I thought I was teaching her to be a good Greek wife. But instead she is teaching me to . . . what? I don’t know.
Would it be wrong to pray? Pray to God to help me understand my feelings? I think I feel too much for Callie. What does it mean? It must be wrong. Sometimes when I’m washing a roast, my hands linger too long on the firm flesh. When I pick tomatoes, my fingers curl around them and don’t want to let go. Eating a cluster of grapes, my tongue curls around each round fruit, licking the smooth skin, and then pushing through to the wet, sweet insides. I want to stay there in luscious, juicy ecstasy and suck and devour and get lost.
I don’t understand. I want a baby. A young Easter lamb is tender and delicious. Older sheep are gamy and tough. I want a baby. I want a baby. I can’t want Callie. She is married, an Amerikanitha, so different, shameless. Without shame. How did she get to be a grown woman without shame? With an open heart?
My heart is closed. It will stay closed. It will only open when God blesses me with a baby, and He will never bless me if I go astray. If I indulge in . . . baths . . . with another woman. The water roiled and lifted the flower petals up around our thighs as we stood there embracing, like a double Aphrodite rising from the water. Perhaps this is a test that God has placed before me to see if I have the moral strength to receive parthenogenesis. Does holding another woman in a bath of warm water constitute moral weakness? Is it a sin if she places her hands on either side of my face and brings me so close to her that I can feel her breath on my lips? Is wrapping her wet ringlets around my fingers and pulling them back so far that her neck is exposed . . . because I don’t want her face too close, too close, close enough to kiss? Is it bad that I leaned in and brushed my lips against the moist skin of her neck, licked the drops of water collected in the well of her neck? I was so thirsty.
If someone is lost in a desert and they’ve run out of water, they start to hallucinate. A mirage will suddenly appear before them, perhaps at a distance, wavering in the hot sun, offering their deepest desires. Water, food, comfort, safety, pleasure. Is it wrong for them to grasp at the unattainable? If they know that they can never have what they want, is it wrong for them to keep wanting it? Or is it a pitiable attempt at survival? Dear God, tell me. Is this a mirage? Or is it real?
Green with Envy
Gus pulled up to the Green Envy Ranch just as the sun was hitting high noon. He sat behind the wheel of the SUV cursing the internet for faulty driving directions to Sebastopol. He looked sideways at his mother sitting in the passenger seat beside him and wiping her forehead with a handkerchief that smelled of lilacs and sour sweat. She had gotten carsick on the ride. Nausea had leached the color from her face and emptied her belly of the coffee and the sticky roll she’d had for breakfast. She dabbed the creases next to her lips, carefully avoiding the pink lipstick that she’d just reapplied. Gus noticed it smelled like cotton candy, and just the thought of the airy confection was enough to make him want to gag just a little into her hand-embroidered handkerchief.
Gus crumpled the driving directions into a ball and threw them at the windshield, where they bounced off and landed in the back of the car on the floor between Callie and Xeni’s feet and under Manny’s car seat. In the rearview mirror he could see the two women look at the mangled paper and then at each other and roll their eyes. Manny poked at a stuffed dog attached to the car seat and then arched his back, crying out against the belts restraining him.
“Was that just the longest hour and a half of my
life?” Gus muttered as he rolled down the window to get some fresh air. Gus had been tense since his mother’s arrival. He’d run to the Greek store four times in the last three days, fetching small items that would make his mother more comfortable: Greek magazines, a religious icon for her guestroom, olive soap, and chunks of halvah. As his mother scolded Callie during the ride, Gus gripped the steering wheel harder and occasionally turned back to ask Xeni to do something, as if she had some magical power to mollify his mother. He had insisted that Xeni come on this outing, hoping that her presence would create some kind of buffer between his mother’s disapproval and Callie’s lack of understanding. Xeni had been working with Callie for weeks, teaching her how to cook Greek food, to speak some of the language and to understand some of the customs, but once born an Amerikana always an Amerikana. He sighed. And the fact that Callie wouldn’t tell him the details of this outing . . . He started thinking about smoking again. Imagined the deep drag he’d take on the Marlboro, holding the smoke in his lungs for a good while before slowly blowing smoke rings into the air.
“Ayori mou, pou me eferes? Sto gabo?” His mother interrupted his smoke fantasy with her question. “My boy, where did you bring me? To the fields?”
“No, of course not, Mana. Why would I bring you to the fields?” He laughed nervously while reading the sign before them: Green Envy Ranch.
Callie looked pleased with herself as she announced, “We’re going apple picking! And then we’ll have a picnic! And tonight I’ll make us a good old-fashioned American apple pie! From scratch!”
Gus groaned audibly at the words “apple picking” and turned to his mother. “I’m sure there are some nice restaurants here in Sebastopol for lunch. We’ll go find one.”
“NO!” Callie shouted. “I mean, no. This is going to be fun. I planned it all out. I have a picnic lunch for us. We’ll eat it under an apple tree once we finish picking. It’ll be pastoral and reminiscent of earlier times.” She reached forward and poked Gus in the ribs with an umbrella she found on the floor of the car.
“Earlier times? Whose earlier times?” Gus was not charmed by her plan. He had never wanted to pick apples as a kid, and he didn’t want to do it now. Then he realized that she must be referring to his mother’s earlier times. “You know, I don’t know that anyone wants to remember earlier times.” He shoved the umbrella back at her.
“Well, we are going to. We’re here now.”
Callie quickly unbuckled the restraints on Manny’s car seat, and Xeni offered to carry him through the verdant orchard on her back like a tasty sack of fruit. Callie helped adjust Manny in the carrier, and she and Xeni walked forward toward the Green Envy Ranch with arms locked. Gus watched them move on ahead of him while he helped his mother out of the SUV. She complained about the car being too high, but Gus couldn’t take his eyes off of Callie. She was walking with her arm around Xeni’s waist and whispering something in her ear. They laughed together, and Xeni tilted her head toward Callie in a gesture that was at once imperceptible and unmistakable. Their foreheads touched for just a moment and Callie blushed before pushing a curl back behind her ear. She smiled and held Xeni’s gaze a moment too long, he thought. They had been getting close, maybe too close. Xeni seemed to understand Callie in a way that he never had. He felt a searing heat rising up from his neck and into his face.
“Ella pedi mou—help me get down.” His mother interrupted his thoughts.
“Yes, Mana. I’m sorry.” He helped her touch her feet down on the dusty parking lot. “I came to Ameriki so that I could come to a village,” she grumbled. “Why are they walking ahead of us? Why don’t they slow down so I can see my grandson?” She looked forward into the entryway of the ranch that was flanked by two vibrantly green apple trees and saw only their healthy strong backs and the baby bouncing farther from her reach. “Why don’t they slow down?” Gus noticed that his mother seemed heavier than he remembered, and she was walking with a slight limp. “I can’t go any faster. I wish I could go faster. I’d dance circles around them and race my grandson to the farthest tree.”
“Mana. Manny can’t walk yet, much less run.”
“Skaseh! You know what I mean.”
Gus could see that with each step his mother fell behind, and the more upset she became. Seeing her struggle made him realize his mother was no longer the powerhouse she once was. She was aging. He put his arm around her shoulders and tenderly kissed her cheek.
• • •
As Callie walked arm in arm with Xeni through the apple orchard, she thanked the Goddess for this second chance with Xeni. Callie was determined to hold onto pieces of herself. Even though she had committed to the path of pleasing Mrs. Horiatis—who, after all, was always going to be Manny’s grandmother—she didn’t want to lose herself or Xeni in the process. Xeni had refused to answer Callie’s calls all the next day after the welcome dinner for Mrs. Horiatis. When they finally spoke, Callie tearfully begged Xeni’s forgiveness for acting so foolish. She had wanted to please Gus and to win his mother’s approval. She had wanted to give Manny the kind of family she had never had, but she was realizing that she wasn’t willing to completely lose herself in the process.
As if to prove it to herself and Xeni, she realized she needed to get back to her roots, her version of family and culture. She decided to bring everyone apple picking, something they could all do together. Green Envy Ranch had Arkansas Black, Granny Smith, Pippins, Gravenstein, Red and Golden Delicious, Rome Beauty, and Macintosh. That was more varieties of apples than she had ever tasted, but she knew that she could make a good old-fashioned double-crust apple pie with the Granny Smiths, using twelve apples just like her Aunt Margie had shown her. With all those apples the upper crust would elevate to an impressive four inches tall. Making pies always made her happy, and she was good at it. And she needed to feel good at something on her own terms. Or maybe she’d make her famous apple crisp with a buttery cinnamon oat topping. The luscious apples contrasted perfectly with the cinnamon crunchy top.
Callie hadn’t planned to lure Xeni into the bathtub that evening, but she could never be sorry for that moment of true connection. It wasn’t the first time that her spontaneity had taken her to unexpected places, and she knew with certainty that it wouldn’t be the last. She often replayed the scene in her mind, her body and heart awakening each time. Xeni had lowered her walls and trusted her, and Callie flashed back on that moment endlessly, even as she was serving Mrs. Horiatis and Gus the dinner they’d prepared. Callie had always been able to love more than one person at a time, but she could feel her feelings shifting toward Xeni in a way that surprised her. Holding Xeni in her arms made Callie feel vulnerable. She wanted to protect Xeni, and her own heart. She wanted to do the right thing for everyone, even though she didn’t know what that was.
Walking with Xeni through the apple orchard, inhaling the scent of ripening fruit, felt like a perfect moment. Knowing there was no easy solution to her dilemma, Callie decided to be present. She lost herself in showing Manny the red, golden, and green apples hanging from the low branches of the trees. The sun was shining through the vibrant green leaves, shooting from every open spot on the tree’s frame. Manny reached for a bright green apple, but couldn’t quite wrap his small fist around it. His fingers all moved together, open and closed, open and closed. He hadn’t yet developed a good one-handed grip for something so comparatively large and hard to grasp. He made a loud excited “aaaaaaaahh!” sound.
Callie looked back at Gus and his mother. He was tenderly offering her his arm as they walked the uneven pavement toward the ranch. His mother looked unhappy about something and barely acknowledged his arm. He placed his hand on his mother’s back. When he looked at his mother, he looked like a little boy again—eager to please her, afraid to disappoint her. He never looked at Callie that way. She used to care, but she was beginning to let go. At some point in the past she would have been jealous, but not now. She was tired of trying to please everyone.
Ap
ple Wishes
I spend most of the ride either looking out of the car window while caressing Manny’s plump hand, or occasionally stealing a glance at Callie and her softly curling red hair or the freckles scattered across her nose that remind me of strawberry seeds.
When Callie announces that we are going apple picking, it almost makes the car ride worth it. Even though I am stuck spending the day with Gus and his bossy mother playing cultural interpreter for Callie, I will enjoy being out in the fields picking the ripened fruit. There is nothing I enjoy more than searching out the freshest ingredients and creating something delicious with them. Apples are luscious when baked with butter, chopped chocolate, and mint tucked into the core. Apples are refreshing in a crisp salad with hearts of romaine, pomegranate seeds, and creamy gorgonzola. Apples sit heavy in the palm of the hand and offer a satisfying mouthful of sweet tanginess as teeth burst through skin and crush firm flesh. I steal another glance at Callie. The love apple, red and juicy.
The fields are fragrant and the trees heavy with fruit. The trees are beautiful mothers dangling their tasty babies from their branches. I carry Manny as Callie and I walk deeper into the orchard surrounded by the soothing, leafy green canopy. Callie’s smiling face shows a look of utter contentment as she spins with arms outstretched under the apple trees. I try to pretend everything is normal, even when our faces come close and foreheads touch, even when her hand rests on my back.
The Feasting Virgin Page 13