She leafed through stacks of music: “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire (I Just Want to Start a Flame in Your Heart)”; “Stardust”; “The Man I Love”; “I’ll Be Seeing You.” These were the songs she had loved and even used to sing with her mother. “It Had To Be You”; “Sentimental Journey.” She took a stack of these to the front and got out her wallet.
“These are wonderful old songs,” the woman said. “You’ll enjoy playing them.”
“Well, I haven’t played in years. I don’t even know if I can. But it will be something to do.”
The woman paused and looked at her.
Margo explained. “I’ve just retired and moved here, so I’m looking for new hobbies.”
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes, my husband died last year. But my two daughters live here with their families. I have three grandchildren. I moved here to see them more often — though I don’t see them as often as I had hoped.”
The woman slipped the sheet music into a bag for her. “You are so lucky. My children moved out west so I hardly ever see them.”
“I’m sorry. That must be tough. Well, I better be on my way.” Margo hated to leave. She’d been so lonely in her new home, and it was nice to talk to someone. “I’m Margo,” she said. “What is your name?”
“Hi, Margo. I’m Anastasia but everyone calls me Anna. Stop by here anytime. By the way, there’s a concert down in the park — chamber music, if you like that sort of thing. They are excellent musicians.”
“Oh? Where is the park?”
“When you go out the door, head left, walk two blocks, and you’ll see it on your right.”
“Thank you so much. I think I’ll do that.”
Margo put the package into her shoulder bag and walked out into the sunlight. It was turning into a nice day, warmer than it had been in weeks. Spring was finally here. She found the park and headed toward the centre of it, where a crowd was gathering and musicians were setting up on a stage surrounded by a concrete divider. It looked like a spot for a fountain — but instead of a fountain there was a slightly raised platform. There were chairs available but they weren’t set into rows —people were grabbing them and placing them wherever they wanted to sit. Some younger couples with children spread out blankets on the grass. Mothers were pushing babies in strollers and finding places to position them. Some older people, and some younger Asian people, had brought umbrellas to protect them from the sun. The musicians were tuning up, getting ready to start.
Margo looked around for a chair but couldn’t find one. All chairs were occupied, some pulled up close to the concrete divider — but there was room to sit right on the divider. Margo did just that and put her feet in front, on the ground. The music was lovely — violin, viola, cello, keyboard — she didn’t know much about classical music but this was pleasant and relaxing.
After the first piece was finished, Margo turned to the young man behind her. “I hope I’m not in your way,” she said. He glowered at her. “Yes, you are,” he said. “I wish you’d move.” His voice had a slight accent that she couldn’t place. “I’m sorry,” she said, too shocked to argue with him. She swung her legs back over the divider and walked away. His rudeness had deeply upset her. She had been a university professor for thirty years and was not used to such treatment. She had been respected. Students had held doors open for her and offered to carry her books. Her face was burning and she thought she might cry.
She walked to further sections of the park, just wandering, looking for buds peeking through the ground, touching the barks of trees. The sun was so warm that she took off her sweater. She thought of sitting in the sun but had not brought her suntan lotion. She looked longingly at a rosy-cheeked baby resting contentedly in his stroller, remembering the times when she had pushed her children, and later her grandchildren, through parks.
The chamber group started to play something unusual, something so haunting that it drew her closer. She stood close to the divider, ignoring the rude man who had rebuked her earlier. This was the most beautiful music she had ever heard — light, mellow, haunting, joyful. Strings and piano — and singing. She hadn’t realized that there was a small choir, as well as the musicians. They must have come later, while she was walking around the park. The voices and strings blended so beautifully, counterpointing, coming together, lifting her up; she forgot that she was standing there in a small park, alone.
Tears in her eyes. Warm arms lifting her up to the sky. Love in someone’s eyes when looking at her. A feeling in the heart. Soft . . . wings . . . air . . . birds . . . sunlight . . . weightlessness. She could almost see the fountain that used to be there, hear the water spraying, see it sparkling.
Then the music stopped. So suddenly. So jarringly. The sun must be setting — the world seemed so dark and cold. She pulled her sweater around her. The fountain was gone; there was only concrete.
The music had stopped so abruptly — yet the piece did not seem finished. The performers were talking amongst themselves. She longed for them to keep playing and singing.
“Why did they stop?” she asked an elderly gentleman standing behind her.
“That piece is unfinished. Even the title was ripped from the manuscript that was found.” His mouth curved downward. “I keep wishing they’d find the missing pages.”
Margo didn’t leave but continued standing there, even though the musicians and singers were packing up and the crowd had dispersed. She jumped when someone spoke to her. “Madam.” It was the rude young man. “I am sorry for my rudeness. You like this music?”
“I love it,” she answered, putting her hand up to shade her eyes so that she could see him. He was tall and slim, with dark hair. “But I didn’t want it to end.”
“Here.” He handed her something, some papers bundled together. “This is the music, a gift for you, since you appreciated this so much.”
She hesitated but took the bundle and looked at it. Music — for piano. Complicated. She’d never be able to play this.
“Thank you so much, but this is too difficult for me,” she told him. But when she looked up, he was gone.
She put the music into her bag and started to walk home. She could not understand why the mysterious man had given this to her.
As she approached Memories, she decided to thank Anna for telling her about the concert. The music was still playing in her head. Anna looked up when she entered, smiling.
“Did you forget something? Was your sheet music all right?”
“Oh, yes. I just wanted to thank you for recommending the concert. It was wonderful!”
“Aren’t they good? Did they play that amazing unfinished piece?”
“Yes, I found it haunting and joyful. I loved it!”
“You know, there’s an urban myth about that. They say that if someone really appreciates the music, the composer (who has been dead for centuries) will come back and give that person a copy of the complete work, along with its title, for whatever instrument the person plays. The person will be able to play the piece but will never remember the title and will never tell anyone about it.”
Margo had been going to tell her about the young man but then found that she couldn’t. She thanked her, waved goodbye, and left.
When she got home, she took out the completed composition and looked at the title. She thought that she would always remember it. She sat down at her piano, spread it out before her, and started to play. She played it from beginning to end, over and over, so beautifully and perfectly. When she put the sheets of music away, she could not remember the title, until she looked at it again. Then she thought that she’d always known it and would never forget it. This was music that was always unfinished and always complete, unfinishing itself when she stopped, completing itself every time she played. Every time she played it, it was all new.
The Invention of Pantyhose: An Autobiography
WALKING UP THIRD Avenue almost all the way to work then turning left and crossing avenues until I get
to Fifth. I work in a travel agency now, though I used to work at Look magazine — couldn’t get past the position of a secretary who was expected to plan men’s dirty weekends and lie to their wives. I was fired because I wouldn’t let my boss touch me. Now in my new job dirty men try to seduce me right in the office or lure me to a lunch that turns out to be an attempted rape. Men whistle when I walk down the street. What’s wrong with me? I’m not that gorgeous. Look at all the models and movie stars who walk down those same streets. Don’t pick on me. I’m happier in the Village, go to hear Allen Ginsberg read, everyone is hoping he’ll say dirty words now that the new law was passed allowing more freedom of speech in public. But he doesn’t. I waitress part time in a Middle Eastern restaurant but am accosted whenever I try to catch a taxi home by men who want me to go to their rooms with them and smoke pot. All I want is to be a writer.
The day I turn ten my best friend and I climb to the top of the trestle and stand next to the railroad track while the train goes by, making our hair stand on end and almost knocking us off the bridge. The sharp whistle pierces my eardrums and sends chills through my body. I’m so proud I did this! Summers are so long and hot, so wonderful — climbing the hills and exploring the woods, jumping across the creek on trails of rocks. Sometimes I fall in and come home soaking wet. Every morning I wake up with pleasure. I step into shorts and a tanktop — different colours every day — dash down to breakfast, and slam out the screen door for another adventure. We play kick the can until it is so dark we can’t see the can. We play badminton in the dark, even though we can’t see the birdie.
Someone throws a cat into my bed in the dormitory while I’m sleeping, a stray cat with a crooked head, scarylooking as hell. I wake up screaming and fear cats ever after. The girls two years behind me follow me everywhere singing, “All day, all night, Marianne,” and unwrap my wrap-around skirt. I don’t know what I’ll do after graduation. Prostitute and nun are both on the list I make as I sit on my bed. Graduate school? Working in New York? Marriage?
The first year I don’t get a doll for Christmas, I am devastated, trying not to cry. I look through all the packages. Something must be missing. I ask my mother, “Where is my doll?”
“We thought you were too old for a doll,” she says.
My first baby is born one month early after I spent two months in bed, bleeding. I hear a strange mechanical sound, then realize it is my baby crying. Is it a boy or a girl? I ask. A girl. Is she okay? Yes, she is fine. She is so tiny and doesn’t know how to eat. Nurses bring her to me at all hours, and we try. Finally, she gets it.
I dance with my cousins on the dirt path between houses. We have oil lamps to help us see. This Greek village does not have electricity or plumbing. At night, I get up from my mattress on the roof and climb down to the toilet in the small shed. The mosquitos drive me crazy. I am covered with large lumps. I stay with cousins who keep a goat in the yard, between the house and the outhouse. I have to get by him in the dark. I wait until he moves away and run past. He is tied with a rope but the rope is long enough for him to reach me. I finish, wipe with newspaper clippings on a hook, and dash back before the goat can butt me.
The doctor holds up my granddaughter. She seems so big. Was she really inside my daughter? My daughter and I look at each other and weep with pleasure and relief. My son-in-law doesn’t want to cut the cord, so I do, and blood spurts out. I scream. The doctor says this means good luck.
I am walking down Fifth Avenue on my way home when I realize that I can’t see the street signs, it is getting darker and darker. Shadowy forms around me, murmurs, nervous questioning voices. I pass the Chrysler building but it is only a large shadow, no lights. I find my apartment building and people with flashlights lead me up the stairs. Major blackout. People think it is the Communists or some kind of attack. We cook packaged Rice-A-Roni on our gas stove but can’t tell in the candlelight when it is browned. Some friends who can’t get out of the city sleep on our floor. Even the phones don’t work. We huddle in the darkness, frightened. My mother finally reaches me by phone. The blackout is there, too, all across the Eastern seaboard. We are terrified. Finally, I sleep, and wake up in the morning to blazing lights and the hum of power lines.
My mother and stepfather come to my graduation when I get my Ph.D. My husband already has his Ph.D.; he is there with our two daughters. We have a party. My mother dances the tango with one of the professors — they fly across the living room floor.
My grandparents come to bring me home from university at the end of my first year. I don’t know why my parents don’t drive down. We arrive home and my father comes out to carry my suitcases and boxes in. That night I hear him screaming in the night, horrible, horrible screaming. The ambulance comes, but he is too big for them to carry down the winding stairs on the stretcher. He sits on the stairway and lowers himself down, one step at a time. Later, a call comes from the hospital. My mother runs to her car, and I jump into the passenger seat. She tells me to stay home, but I won’t. We get to the hospital, take the elevator, run to his room. The door is closed. “He is gone,” we are told, and I start screaming.
Two brothers own the Syrian restaurant in the Village. Both of them want to sleep with me. They call me “the god-damn Greek.” But I know they like me. They throw out any man who accosts me and help me get taxis safely. They also cook me dinner, whatever I want, when I arrive at work. The other waitresses stare at me in resentment. I am working at the restaurant on my birthday, depressed that no one is celebrating it with me, no one is saying happy birthday. A customer comes back with flowers. “I forgot to tip you,” he says. I am so pleased. “It’s my birthday,” I tell him. Then, after work, one of the brothers pulls out a cake for me, and they all sing.
I dream of a chained up giant who gets free. The chain hangs loose in my kitchen, no giant attached. I am afraid. I dream of children uncared for. I must rush back to be sure that they are not alone. I have to take care of the children.
Snowfall. I ride to work with a friend. My husband, whom I married in Greece, drives in himself — he just got his license. He passes the school bus and collides with a tractor-trailer. I am left with a thirteen-month-old daughter. I dreamed it before it happened.
Every day after dinner I ride my bicycle around the neighbourhood. It is so quiet in this little town. In the winter, I dig tunnels in the snow and slide on the ice. At school we have roller skating parties and sock hops. I am the first to wear coloured tights under my skirts. Soon everyone is wearing them.
Pantyhose. No seams, no leg-digging garters, no tops of legs showing. One of the best inventions in the history of women. I babysit for the children of my girlfriend’s new lover. She pays me in pantyhose.
The boy next door calls me “fat legs Harry,” and I never forget it. I always cover my legs now.
My three grandchildren sit on my lap, smiling; I put this picture on Facebook.
I really wanted a doll for Christmas.
Another daughter. She kisses her dolls, her toys, but not us, not for a long time. I tell her not to be afraid, the goddess Diana is in the moon and will protect her. She says, “Mom, the moon is the moon.”
Newgrange in Ireland, Tim and I crawl inside the 5000-year-old structure, stand inside the circular centre, imagining the winter solstice, light running along the pathway, curving its way to fulfilment, to endless cycles. The light always returns.
I sit in my playpen and wail. “Howlagellup?” Someone comes and stands me up. I clutch the side and wail again. “Howlagetdown?”
Crossing the bridge over the creek, kissing my boyfriend on the bridge, the neighbours complain, my mother scolds me, but he and I walk at dusk, hand in hand.
My grandfather calls me “Blotso.” “What does that mean,” I ask him. “That’s Greek for good looking,” he says.
A girl in the Greek village notices my pantyhose as we climb up the hill. She has never seen anything like them. “How can your stockings go all the way to the top?” she asks.
After I return to America, I send her a pair. She saves them for special occasions. I don’t remember this but she never forgot that gift. She tells me this as we sit in her stuffy, darkened apartment in a suburb of Athens. Her thirty-six-year-old daughter died of cancer five months earlier. We look at her photograph on the wall. We talk about pantyhose.
I ride my bicycle all around town every summer night after dinner. Then we play kick the can until the darkness turns the can into an invisible shadow. We go home for popcorn and juice and television. I sleep peacefully in my bedroom with its yellow-flowered wallpaper and golden curtains. A weeping willow tree caresses the window and protects me from harm. Can’t wait until morning.
Acknowledgements
Three of these stories were published in issues of Event magazine: “No Man” (as “No Man’s Castle”); “The Sacrifice”; and “Thirteen” (as “Trinities”). I wish to thank my husband, J.R. (Tim) Struthers, for reading these stories and giving me such good advice; my nephew Ioakim Kountalis and my cousin Yiannis Mikrogiannakis for answering my questions about Greek names; and the University of Guelph for granting me a research leave that gave me the time to write and revise many of these stories.
About the Author
Marianne Micros, in her story collection Eye and other writings, explores the mythology, folklore, Greek customs, and old-world cultures that have fascinated her all her life. Her previous publications include: a book of poetry about her Greek family (Upstairs Over the Ice Cream, Ergo); a poetry collection that focuses primarily on her search for ancestors and family members in Greece (Seventeen Trees, Guernica); and poems and short fiction in anthologies and journals. She has also published scholarly articles on Renaissance and contemporary subjects and a bibliographical monograph on Al Purdy. Marianne’s suite of poems Demeter’s Daughters was shortlisted for the Gwendolyn MacEwen poetry competition in 2015 and published in Exile: The Literary Quarterly. Marianne obtained her Ph.D. in English from The University of Western Ontario and, after some thirty years of teaching, has now retired from her career as an English professor at the University of Guelph, where she taught Renaissance literature, Scottish literature, folktales, and creative writing. Marianne is currently compiling her new poems into a book entitled The Aphrodite Suite and is working on a second collection of stories.
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