Honestly, We Meant Well

by Grant Ginder

  “Are you honestly insane?” She grips the side of her chair and stays put. “I’ve been traveling for over twenty-four hours, Dean. To get here I took two planes, a very unsafe taxi, and a boat. I spent eighteen hours in Frankfurt, where I ate a microwaved hot dog from a cart in the middle of terminal D. And I did it for you. Do you hear me? I did it all for you.” She grips the side of her chair. “So, no, thank you. I won’t be going anywhere.”

  He grabs her beneath each shoulder, digging his fingers into her wet armpits, and, with a heave, he pulls her to her feet.

  “You’re leaving,” he says.

  “I’m not!” She pushes away from him. The chair teeters and tumbles over, clacking against the stone. “Jesus, Dean. I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

  Her lips quiver, and a series of small cracks along her cheeks threaten to deepen. He wants to see her cry, he realizes.

  “Well, I’m not,” he says. “I’m not happy to see you.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “Not even a modicum. Not even a speck, an iota, a scrap, or a soupçon. In fact, I am, decidedly, unhappy to see you.”

  She starts sobbing, her tears moistening her cheeks not in elegant rivulets, but all at once, in a deluge. Her shoulders convulsing, she reaches downward and starts pulling at the hem of her shirt—a white tee bearing a cubist, Picasso-fied rendition of Nelson Mandela.

  “I mean, what were you thinking?” he continues, feeling finally in control. “I came here to get away from you. You realize that, don’t you? When I left without telling you, I was literally running away from you. What could have possibly made you think this was a good idea? No, don’t cover your face with your hands—I want you to answer me. What could have possibly made you think this was a good idea?”

  Ginny wipes her nose against her sleeve. Tendrils of hair have escaped her ponytail and now cling to her damp neck.

  She says, in between a trio of guttural sobs: “Because I love you?”

  He drops her rucksack and grabs both of her shoulders.

  “You don’t. Do you hear me? You don’t.”

  Ginny shakes her head. “You’re not allowed to tell me that.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I am, especially because you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pushes his hands away and sits down again, this time pulling her left foot under her rear. Christ, Dean thinks, repulsed: she’s never looked so young.

  “You’re in love with my book, not me,” he says. “Those are two different things.”

  “That’s not true,” she says. “And even so—they aren’t that different. You wrote that book.”

  Dean shakes his head. “You’re leaving—now,” he says. “Will could be back any minute, and my wife’s presentation is tomorrow. I want you off the island by then.”

  Ginny sniffles and mumbles something Dean doesn’t quite make out.

  “I can’t understand you when you’re blubbering.”

  “I said it’s today!” Ginny yells. “Sue Ellen’s presentation is today. I looked it up on Golden Age Adventures’ website before I bought a one-way ticket and crossed ten time zones to see you. I swear to God, sometimes it’s like I know more about your own family than you do.”

  Dean’s pulse begins to quicken; there’s a catch—shallow and brief—in his throat.

  “No,” he says. “No, she and I talked about it two days ago. It’s on Saturday.”

  “Well, today is Saturday.” Ginny releases her left foot from under her ass. The skin around her ankle is red and wrinkled, striped from the places where it’s been pressing against the chair’s slats.

  “You know,” she says, “you’re really acting like an asshole.”

  Dean picks up the rucksack again and slings it over his left shoulder. Then he reaches for her suitcase and, finally, Ginny’s wrist.

  “Get up,” he says. “Now.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  He doesn’t listen to her.

  He yanks her out from the chair and says, “We’re going inside.”

  In the dining room, he searches for a spot where he might hide Ginny. Someplace far from the window, where he might reason with her—or, at the very least, coerce her into going home. A closet would be best, he thinks, were it not for the distinct possibility that she might suffocate or—worse—scream.

  “Here,” he says, shutting the door. “Sit there, at this table.”

  She does as she’s told, plopping down in a chair. Its wooden legs wobble and creak.

  “What are you going to do now?” she says. Her voice is still sad, but it carries something else with it: rancor and resentment. Ginny’s impressive, youthful spite. “Fuck me?”

  Dean looks at her legs, which she’s presently sliding open. Her shorts ride up her thighs, uncovering freckles, and skin, and—finally—a few wisps of red hair. Reaching down, he shoves her knees back together.

  “For Christ’s sake, Ginny. No one’s doing any fucking.”

  He is, he realizes, a little scared of her. Rubbing his bald spot, he looks down at the tiled floor.

  Behind him, he hears her say: “I came here to tell you something.”

  “Yeah? Well, save it. I’m trying to think.”

  When does his wife’s presentation start? He remembers her saying something about dusk—about all those geriatrics gathering with their walkers at the temple’s steps, and Sue Ellen speaking as the sun dipped into the Aegean, and her stopping just in time for everyone to have a glass of cheap chardonnay before Zeus, or Poseidon, or Shiva, or whoever ripped a tear in the space-time continuum and carried them all away to that plush, easily navigable retirement home in the sky. No—he’s making that last part up. Obviously he’s making that last part up. But seriously, she did mention dusk, though, didn’t she? Or maybe that’s just the writer in him, adding dramatics where they needn’t be. Maybe the presentation is actually in, say, an hour, smack-dab in the middle of the Greek afternoon—if that’s the case, then he’s even more screwed than he imagined. More important, though: Why can’t he remember?

  Because he’s someone who forgets. He doesn’t want to be—that’s why he went along to Connie’s, it’s why he’s trying to get Ginny to leave. He wants to be someone who not only remembers the hour of his wife’s lecture, but who recalls—without blinking an eye—details like birthdays and anniversaries, promotions and deaths. Someone who writes thank-you notes within a week of receiving a gift, and visits sick friends in the hospital, and asks his guests about dietary restrictions before planning a dinner party. He wants to be someone who plans dinner parties. None of this comes naturally to him, though. Instead, he ignores. He buys himself Christmas presents, and always makes sure his wineglass is the fullest, and trolls negative Amazon reviews of his novels under the pseudonym Book Fan Beth. He’ll try harder though, he thinks, as he listens to Ginny sigh behind him. And if he does, if whatever deific power brought him to Greece and Ginny to him decides to intervene on his behalf, then he promises he’ll repent. He’ll forgo his vices—his college coeds and Hollywood minxes—and become the sort of man he knows he’s supposed to be.

  He presses his palms together and closes his eyes. But then he opens them again. He’s never prayed before, he realizes, and he doesn’t know where to start.

  Ginny says, “I think you’ll be very interested in what it is I have to tell you.”

  “I doubt that,” he replies. “I really, really doubt that.”

  On top of one of the room’s other tables he sees his laptop; rushing to it, he flips it open. He’ll follow Ginny’s lead and look at Golden Age Adventures’ website, he figures. Find a calendar for the cruise that lists the day’s events. And while he’s at it, he’ll research ferry schedules, bus lines, and airfares. He won’t shut the thing off until he’s got a plan—an immediate one—to get the girl off the island and out of the country. He doesn’t care what it costs him; he’ll refinance his house if he has to.

  But when he hits the power button, not
hing happens: no illuminating screen, no whirring fan, no clicking of impossibly tiny gears. He hits it again, and then again, and then again, punching it harder with his thumb each time, until Ginny, who has now stood up and is hovering dangerously close to the window, says, “Jesus Christ, what did that computer ever do to you?” The problem is the battery: over the past two weeks, it’s managed to die. If he’d actually been using the laptop to write—which is the ostensible reason that he brought it with him from San Francisco in the first place—then maybe he would have been periodically charging it. But he hasn’t been writing. And so, this current quandary—a dead computer; an ungoogleable future—is no one’s fault but his own. A spectacular display of lethargy, which has allowed the old PC’s juice to bleed out at a slow, electric trickle.

  “What’s the Wi-Fi password here?”

  He turns and sees Ginny standing next to one of the room’s French doors.

  “Get away from there,” he says. “Someone might see you.”

  “It’s the only place I get service.” She pushes one of the doors open and sticks her arm outside. “Now tell me the password.”

  Dean says, “You won’t be here long enough to need the password. Now goddamn it, Ginny, get away from there.”

  “Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? She leans out a little farther, trying to catch a signal with her mobile. “I want to post a picture I took on Facebook.”

  He lunges toward her and rips the phone away.

  “Are you insane? What if Will sees it?”

  “He blocked me three months ago.”

  “Frankly, I can’t say I blame him.”

  Dean looks down at Ginny’s mobile—a thin, rose-gold model encased in reclaimed wood. Its screen displays a photograph of Virginia Woolf looking thoughtful and forlorn, the tip of her equine nose reflecting light from some unseen source. Staring at her—those gaunt British cheekbones, those suicidal eyes—he suddenly has an idea. His fingers shaking, he connects to the hotel’s spotty Wi-Fi and begins tapping on the screen.

  “Hey,” she says, taking a large step toward him. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m buying you a flight.” He doesn’t look up. “I’m sending you home.”

  “Goddamn it, Dean! I don’t want to go home!” Ginny reaches for him, but he holds the phone above his head. She’s close enough now that he can smell her—the too-sweet notes of yesterday’s deodorant and the yeasty ones of this morning’s sweat. He pushes her aside and turns his back. There’s a Lufthansa flight out of Eleftherios Venizelos at nine o’clock this evening. She’ll have to spend the night in Zurich, but he doesn’t care: he’s four clicks away from freedom. He’s almost there.

  “Your son turned in an old story of yours for his senior thesis,” she blurts out. “Will—he plagiarized you.”

  Dean gawks at her. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not.” She’s backlit—the sun floods in through the door behind her—and as he watches her chest heaving, her hair catching bits of light, he thinks she might burst into flames. “That shitty thing you wrote about the Laundromat. He turned it in to Claudia Min. She gave him an A minus. In fact”—she digs into her rucksack and pulls out a fistful of wrinkled pages—“I have it right here.”

  “An A minus!?”

  “It’s not a very good story, Dean. Anyway, aren’t you furious?”

  It’s an interesting question: Is he? Maybe, he thinks—or, at least, conceptually he is. Both at his son’s predictable ineptitude and Claudia’s grading audacity (an A minus). And if the immediate stakes weren’t, well, what they are, he imagines that conceptual anger might transcend into something a little more palpable, a little more real. But alas, the present isn’t exactly affording him opportunities for transcendence. Ginny, after all, is still standing there, very much in front of him. Her phone is still in his hand, the Lufthansa site open and begging for his credit card.

  “I’ll talk to Will.”

  “You’ll talk to him.”

  “Yes, he’s my son. I’ll talk to him.” He punches in the number of his American Express. “Now, where would you like to sit on your fourteen-hour flight from Zurich to SFO? The back of the plane sounds good, I think. Somewhere in the middle. I wouldn’t want you to have to decide between window and aisle.”

  Lunging forward, she snatches the device from him and throws it out the open door. There’s a moment where he thinks he can hear it falling—the whoosh of oxygen against its trim sides; the thick island air being split in two—but then that sound is replaced by something else: a splash.

  “Ginny!”

  “There’s another thing, Dean.”

  “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  He rushes over to the door and looks out, just in time to see the phone sinking to the bottom of the Alectrona’s pool.

  She says: “I’m pregnant.”

  Will

  August 3

  Hydra and Aegina

  It’s early—he’s waiting for the nine o’clock ferry to Aegina—and from the bench where he’s sitting he can see the mast of Finja’s Fantasy rocking back and forth in its berth. Two small flags hang from the backstay, one German and one Greek, and he watches them flutter before he works his eyes downward, skimming past the boat’s rigging and landing, finally, on a man’s body. It’s Dio, he knows, prepping the yacht for Klaus. Coiling thick braids of rope, scrubbing away cigarette ash from last night. Will wipes bits of sleep away from his eyes and stares for a moment longer. Then he spits out the stale gum he’s been chewing and looks away.

  What had happened before he read the book? He and Dio kissed, then undressed. Had paused their little Greek lesson long enough to slip out of their clothes and into each other.

  It was difficult work. Getting belowdecks was hardly as easy as moving from a couch to a bed; on the boat, there were obstacles. Still, they did it, performing the acrobatics necessary to sleep together. They worked their bodies into strange new geometries, their breaths fogging the room’s single porthole. Careful not to smash their heads on the cabin’s low ceiling, they engaged in that familiar tug-of-war, stealing control from each other, only to relinquish it seconds later.

  And it would have been fine, Will thinks now, if he’d left it at that, the simple victory of sex. He hadn’t, though. Instead, he had convinced himself that a night spent with someone on a boat deserved meaning, a significance that lasted beyond sunrise. Reaching into his backpack, he fishes out the tempelopita he bought earlier that morning. The pie’s still hot. Gingerly, he peels it away from its wax paper and breaks off a chunk, his fingers turning greasy from the phyllo dough and melted cheese. It’s tart and rich—halfway between a Danish and a bowl of fettucine Alfredo. He looks into the pastry’s steaming innards and decides that he hates feta. He decides he’d be happy to never see the stuff again.

  He had returned to the bedroom belowdecks after discovering what his father had done. He had undressed, throwing his pants in with the sheets that he and Dio had kicked into a loose pile on the floor. He slept then, but fitfully; his mind kept racing back to what he had stolen from his father and what his father had stolen from him. While he wanted to believe that he and Dean were different, the evidence suggested they were more alike than Will was comfortable admitting. It was a thought that churned his stomach—twice he rolled over, thinking he was going to be sick.

  Dawn had already started to creep upon him when he finally shut his eyes. When he woke up an hour or so later, Dio was still asleep on his stomach, his spine crosshatched with traces of oil and sweat. Will watched him breathe, the subtle rise and fall of his body. Then he slipped into his khakis. He draped his oxford over his shoulder and returned to the deck. Hydra dressed for morning was an entirely different island. The silence of 3 A.M. had given way to the crowing of roosters, the barks of distant dogs. Slowly, sunlight began creeping over the eastern edge of the harbor, washing everything, from boats to cobblestones to rough stone cliffs, in pale pink.

  What was it that he
had said to Dio when, persuaded by both certainty and anger, he had gone back downstairs to wake him? I think I love you, and I want to stay with you. Something awful like that, he thinks, throwing away the rest of the tempelopita: it’s only been an hour, and already he wishes he could erase the memory. Unremember the way Dio had blinked and then shaken his head.

  “Will…” he had started.

  “I know it’s a lot to wake up to, but just let me finish.”

  Dio sat up and rested a pillow across his bare thighs.

  He said, “Go on.”

  His curls stood on end, and his lips were chapped. He looked fogged, annoyed. Waiting to go back to sleep.

  Will hedged. He said, “I don’t mean, like, forever or anything. Just until the end of August, maybe. Or September. I could help you at the school. Teach classes or something.”

  “You’ve sailed for a day.”

  “You said I’m a natural, though.”

  “You can’t tie a bowline.”

  “Quoth Dionysus: Fuck the bowline.”

  Outside, something rattled: a cart being dragged across the pier’s uneven stones.

  “It’s a bad idea,” Dio said. “You’re supposed to leave in a day, anyway.”

  “Two,” Will corrected. “I’m supposed to leave in two days. But that’s what I’m saying—I don’t have to go then—”

  “No.” Dio tossed the pillow to the floor and, standing, reached for his clothes. “You’re not staying. You can’t stay.”

  “Give me one good reason why.”

  Dio put on his pants and yanked up the zipper.

  “Because you’re on vacation.”

  “So what?”

  “Because this isn’t real.” He ran both hands over his head, tangling his fingers in his hair. Will leaned against the cabin’s wall and pulled his knees to his chest. “Look”—Dio lowered his voice—“I know this all seems great right now. You come to Greece, meet some guy on Grindr, screw around on a boat. Get drunk with an old British woman. That’s not real, though, okay? That’s not actually life.”

  “Yeah? Then what is?”