Honestly, We Meant Well

by Grant Ginder

  Will

  July 27 and 28

  Aegina

  They are, if nothing else, a family of books: books they read, books they study, books they collect. Books they dream of someday writing; books they stress over and abandon; books that win fortune and fame. He remembers when his mother kicked his father out. Dean had brought with him his suitcase, some boxes, and a trash bag full of books. It was unclear which ones he’d selected until, days later, Sue Ellen asked Will if he’d seen her copy of The Complete Works of Sappho.

  “I haven’t,” he told her. It was Saturday afternoon, and Will had come home to check on his mother. They were both in the living room, where he had draped himself over an easy chair. Now he hauled himself up to join Sue Ellen in front of the bookcase. For the most part, it was full—overflowing, really. Dog-eared and decaying editions of Anne Carson and Aristophanes, of Steinbeck and Szymborska and Calvino, grew in piles on the floor. On the shelves, though, there were a few conspicuous holes: empty slots where titles had been removed.

  “I guess Dad took it,” he said.

  For a moment, his mother said nothing. Down the hall, halfway to the kitchen, an old grandfather clock—the same one that Will had broken as a teenager and had to pay a thousand dollars to have repaired—chimed four times.

  “He hates Sappho,” she said.

  “Maybe he decided to give her another try.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s it,” Sue Ellen said.

  She tucked her hair behind her ears and reached for a copy of Elektra instead.

  So, yes: a family of books. Books as secrets; books as betrayals; books as a means of cryptic but unmistakable revenge. Books that—in Will’s case—are forgotten, not at home, but in the seat-back pockets of Athens-bound planes. It was a copy of The Brothers Karamazov that his father had given him three years ago, after his first tumultuous year at Berkeley. He hadn’t read it yet, he just couldn’t get into it, though he suspected this was his own fault, not Dostoevsky’s. Dean agreed with him and had taken to mocking him for it with a sort of relentlessness that Will suspected was only appropriate when discussing Russian literature. So, on the ferry to Aegina, when he demanded that Will sit down and read—when he told him that he was already seasick, and if there was one thing that would make him actually vomit, it would be having to endure another nanosecond of his son’s pacing—Will panicked. He fumbled through excuses before admitting, sheepishly, that he had left the book on the plane.

  “Well,” his father said. His cheeks had taken on a pale green pallor. “That wasn’t very smart.”

  “I’m sorry,” Will said. “I promise I’ll buy another copy when we get back.”

  “Don’t bother.” Dean wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Best to leave it for someone who will actually read it.”

  Now Will wades waist-deep into the Alectrona’s pool while, on opposite ends of the stone deck, his parents flip through paperbacks. They’re both splayed out on green chaise longues and are, for the first time this trip, wearing bathing suits: Dean has opted for a pair of red trunks, Sue Ellen a black one-piece. Running his hand an inch above the water’s surface, he looks at his father’s legs, which are drooped on either side of the chair. They’re white, but with a faint pinkish tinge; beneath the skin, veins sprout purple branches. There’s hair, but it’s mostly gathered around his ankles and calves; anywhere above the knee, the strands are sparse and patchy. It always sort of startles Will, seeing his parents in various states of undress. It’s why he was happy they had to wear wet suits when they took surfing lessons in France. He knows they have bodies, of course, but checking in on them like this—seeing their naked and unshielded selves—reminds him that they’re old and that, by extension, he is no longer young.

  Planting his hands against the rough stone, he hauls himself up out of the pool and sits on the deck. From behind him, he hears his mother say, “Will, sweetie, what do you say about getting us some beers?”

  He does. He wipes his feet down with the edge of his mother’s towel and trots across the hot stone to the Alectrona’s kitchen. He pops the tops off two bottles of Mythos before grabbing his phone from his room and returning to the backyard.

  The hotel’s Wi-Fi is spotty, particularly here, on the back terrace, but once he snags a strong enough connection, he opens Instagram and returns to Rajiv’s feed. He’s held off looking at it for three days—a feat that he pegs as something bordering on heroic—but now, with nothing else to do, he figures he’ll allow himself to indulge. The new posts are, by and large, the same as the old ones: pictures of Rajiv and Logan with their shirts off, paired with quotes about being true to yourself, loving who you love, and not listening to the haters, even though, as far as Will can tell, there aren’t any haters to be found. The only real difference he can spot is an increase in photos taken at Fama. Rajiv eating cupcakes with François in the office’s dessert bar. Rajiv, with François standing next to him, holding a mock-up of a tube of potato chips. Proud to announce Pringle’s newest flavor, named by yours truly, the caption says. Thanks to big man F for all his <3 and support. Zooming in on the picture, Will squints and reads the copy printed on the tube: THE RIDGE-CUT FIRE-ROASTED CHIPOTLE POTATO CHIP.

  He whispers: “You fucking thief.”

  Then he deletes Instagram and downloads Grindr instead.

  Or—no. Perhaps more specifically, he re-downloads Grindr, as Grindr has a curious tendency of disappearing and reappearing on his phone, depending on factors ranging from boredom to intoxication to loneliness. This is, however, the first time he’s opened the app here, on the island. To that end, he doesn’t know what he expects to find—though, for being in Greece, he is a little puzzled by how few, well, Greeks appear to be within his general vicinity. Rather, Aeginan Grindr seems to have been colonized almost exclusively by tourists. Still, he plays along; he engages in his standard ritual of scrolling and zooming and poking pictures of headless torsos. He reduces himself to a single photo and adopts the app’s mindless vernacular (hey, whats up, into?). Once he’s exhausted his possibilities, he refreshes the screen, watching the images reload into a new (though actually the same) checkerboard of flesh. This lasts for about ten minutes, a period during which Sue Ellen leaves the pool deck to make a sandwich and Dean looks up from his book to ask, “What are you doing over there?”

  Will clicks on a thumbnail—a zoomed-in shot of a biceps, a ghost arm that’s not attached to a body or face.

  “Nothing, really,” he says. “Just playing around.”

  Dean picks up his book again.

  He says, “I never knew just playing around required so much focus.”

  Will doesn’t answer. He’s just received a new message—a four-word missive from a blank black box.

  It says: Look who it is.

  He types back who is this and a moment later receives an answer in the form of a picture: the waiter, Dio, leaning against a redbrick wall.

  Oh ha hey

  You never came sailing

  Sorry went to delphi w my family

  oh right. how was that

  great—found out what my future will be

  and?

  pretty bleak

  A minute passes and Dio doesn’t respond.

  Then Will’s phone buzzes.

  Dio says: wanna get a beer or something

  Will looks at his father. He’s fallen asleep and has draped his book across his face like an eyeless mask.

  He types sure.

  * * *

  He’s worried that he’s wearing the wrong thing.

  This is what Will’s thinking as he watches Dio disappear into the bar to order their third round of drinks. Had they not arranged to meet on a hookup app, it would have been easy; he would have traded in his wet trunks for a pair of shorts, thrown on a shirt, and biked into town. The context of the app added a layer of complication, though. While he was relatively sure they would not be having sex, he was also not entirely sure; the pressure of it, howeve
r obscure, was still there, haunting the periphery of their conversation. As such, while he was getting ready he had felt a certain obligation to appear, to some extent, sex-worthy. What sex-worthy meant in Greece, though, was still something of a mystery to him. So he ironed a blue oxford. Inspecting himself in the mirror, though, he decided that a button-down was too stuffy, too Talented Mr. Ripley; this wasn’t a date, and he didn’t want to show up looking like he thought it was. He traded it in for a tank top, a white one that Rajiv always used to say made him look tan, before Rajiv left him for Logan from Laguna Beach and a life of stealing Will’s names for potato chips.

  Now he’s sure he made the wrong choice. While the shirt might make him look tan, it also makes his arms look skinny and his shoulders too thin. He feels like a hanger, the cotton draping off him, swallowing him up. Maybe he should have gone for the oxford, something that made him look a little older, a little more serious.

  “Mythos is basically piss water,” Dio says, setting two glasses filled with a clear liquid down on the table. “I thought this time we could try something a little bit stronger.”

  He’s wearing a striped shirt and jean shorts that nearly reach his knees. A few days ago, when he had been his waiter, Will guessed Dio was a year or two older than him; he sees now, though, that he’s probably approaching thirty. Crow’s-feet crease the corners of his eyes, and there are gray patches in the stubble of his beard.

  “What is this?” Will asks, picking up the glass.

  “Ouzo.”

  Will sniffs it. His eyes water.

  Dio reaches out with his own glass and knocks it against Will’s.

  “You can’t come to Greece without drinking it at least once.”

  Will takes a sip, and it burns his throat, leaving his mouth feeling rancid. Running his tongue over his teeth, he stares at the glass and watches the liquor grow cloudy as a single ice cube melts. Then he goes for a second sip. It tastes like licorice, he decides—the black, tarry kind his grandparents used to eat.

  He says, “It’s delicious.”

  “It’s not. No one thinks it is, except for old pappouses who’ve burned all their taste buds off, anyway. But you’re a good man for lying.”

  “I actually don’t know if I can finish it.”

  “Sure you can—it’ll put some hair on your chest. Just give it a second. Forget how bad it tastes, and take it all down in one swallow.”

  The bar that he’s brought them to is called Captain Ioannis’. It’s on the harbor’s main drag, though at the opposite end of it from Taverna Karalis, the restaurant where Dio works. Inside there’s a lukewarm commitment to a nautical theme: two of the barstools are wrapped in rope; a lifesaver hangs above the bathroom door. Outside there are a handful of tables, and it’s here where Will and Dio sit. For most of their conversation the focus has been on Will, and this makes him uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to be perceived as someone who talks solely about himself. Each time he tries to ask a question, though, Dio immediately responds with another one, swerving around answers like they’re traffic cones. The result has been a sort of extended interview in which Will has described, among other things, his mother (lovely), his father (brilliant), and his post-graduate plans (uh, not yet defined?). He has offered up opinions on the Alectrona, and Eleni Papadakis, and the food on Aegina. Once in a while, Dio will respond with an insight (the Alectrona: I can’t believe it’s still around; Eleni Papadakis: terrifying; the island’s food: it’s not as fresh as you think). Mostly, though, he just sits, nodding. Rambling on, Will wonders if Dio’s actually listening or if he’s just happy not to talk.

  But now he senses an opening: Dio downs the rest of his ouzo, and before he has time to ask something else, Will says:

  “So, Queens?”

  He swallows, grimacing. “Astoria. Born and sort of raised.”

  “When did you move here?”

  “When I was fifteen, after my mom died.” Dio looks into the empty glass, then sets it on the table. “Fuck, that stuff is rough.”

  “I’m sorry. About your mom, I mean.”

  “Oh, it’s fine. I mean it’s not, but it is.”

  “How’d she die?”

  “Liver failure.”

  “Was she—”

  “An alcoholic? No. As it turns out, she just had a really bad liver.”

  “Wow.”

  “That was a joke. She had a pint of gin every day for lunch.” Dio looks behind him, back toward the bar. “After telling you that, do you think it’d be tacky for me to order another drink?”

  “Uh, no? Or, I don’t know? She was your mom—I think that’s probably your call.”

  Dio doesn’t go to the bar. Instead, he stays seated. He cracks his neck, angling it from side to side, before stretching his arms over his head. As he does so, the bottom hem of his shirt raises an inch, exposing a landscape of skin and hair, a single small mole.

  Will looks down. He swirls around what’s left of his ouzo and wonders how long he can delay finishing it.

  “So why’d you move back to Aegina?” he asks.

  “My dad grew up here. As soon as it was just the two of us, he started making plans to leave Astoria.”

  “He didn’t like New York?”

  “He hated it.” Dio works his knuckles, pressing his thumb on top of each one until there’s a quiet crack. “It was my mom’s idea to move, I guess. They met here, when they were teenagers. The way he tells it, they had this storybook romance. Walks on the beach, moonlight swims, dancing. Really, the whole nine yards. It can’t be true, though. I mean, my mother fucking hated dancing.”

  He reaches for Will’s glass, and Will doesn’t stop him. He just watches as Dio finishes the ouzo, the muscles in his throat contracting as he swallows.

  “Anyway, I think what actually happened is that Mom saw Dad as a meal ticket and a way to get out of here. His family had a little bit of money, at least at the time, and I think she probably told him that she would agree to marry him if he agreed to move to New York.”

  “He never told you any of this?”

  A stray cat curls itself around Dio’s leg, and he kicks it away.

  “No,” he says. “Not directly, at least. She trained him pretty good to keep his mouth shut. After she died, though—I was thirteen—he started to let things slip.”

  “Like what?”

  Two yards from their table, at the border of the patio and the sidewalk, the cat begins preening itself, licking its paws and cleaning its face.

  “Oh, just that it had been her idea to come to New York, and that he had always hated it. I remember him having this total breakdown once after coming back from the store. The trains were all fucked up, and it was raining, and his grocery bags got wet and ripped, and when he showed up at our apartment his arms were filled with these soggy boxes of cereal and the pockets of his coat were stuffed with soup cans. He started screaming that hell would be better than the city, because at least in hell you know things are miserable, whereas the city promises you convenience but then secretly conspires to make even the smallest things hard.”

  He runs a hand over his head, working knots out from the dark waves of hair. “Anyway, he started making plans for us to leave that night. I know it sounds morbid, but I think he actually ended up being happy that Mom died. It meant that we could come back here.”

  “Were you happy to come back?”

  “Me? Fuck, no. I was furious. I told him that as soon as I was old enough to be on my own, I’d be back in Queens. I was fifteen, though. And when you’re fifteen your entire world consists of what’s in front of your face.”

  “And now you’re…”

  “How old am I? I’m thirty-two.” He tears at a fingernail with his teeth and spits it over his left shoulder. “I’m thirty-two, and I’m still here.”

  The sun clears the patio’s awning, and for a moment Will is blinded. He reaches for his sunglasses, then blinks, letting his eyes adjust. Across the street, a long line of boats is tied u
p against the quay, a wall of hulls and masts that rocks gently with each new wake.

  “Where’s your dad now?”

  “Here, on the island. He lives in town, about fifteen minutes from here.”

  “You live in town, too?”

  “I live with him.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m thirty-two, and I live with my father.”

  “No, no.” Will blushes. “It’s not that. I’m sorry. It’s just—that must be hard.”

  “It is. I want to kill him half the time.” He drums his fingers on the table. “He’s old, though. He needs my help.”

  “Does he … does he, like, know about you?”

  “Does he know what about me?”

  “Does he know that—I don’t know, does he know that you’re here, with me?”

  “You mean does he know that I use the wonders of modern telecommunications to expand my social circle and meet people who are not from this fucking island? No. He does not.”

  Will thinks for a moment and says, “I always tell people that Grindr is the best guide for tourists.”

  “So do I.” Dio smiles. “But I think we’re saying two different things.”

  Will stretches his legs out and accidently brushes up against Dio’s calf. Pulling them back, he apologizes.

  “You apologize too much, you know that?”

  Will nearly says he’s sorry but stops himself. He asks, instead, “You got plans tomorrow?”

  “I was thinking of taking one of the school’s sabots out in the afternoon, depending on the wind.”