Honestly, We Meant Well

by Grant Ginder

  “Here? You want to know what life is here?” Dio slipped his arms through his shirtsleeves. “It’s the churn of tourists coming in and out. It’s kissing the asses of fat fucks like Klaus so they’ll toss you a few jobs when they’re feeling generous. It’s working at that shitty café on Aegina so you can make rent for you and your father.”

  He began fastening the buttons but stopped.

  “What it’s not,” he said, “is this.”

  Will stared at his feet. He hadn’t bothered to find his espadrilles, and now, in the half-light of the cabin, his toes looked dirty, caked in salt and grime.

  He said, “So, what, you don’t think I could stand it?”

  “I think whatever delusions you have would disappear very fast.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  Dio sighed, and his ribs, framed by each side of his shirt, pressed against his skin. Will watched him, waiting for him to speak, to punch another hole in his plan. When he didn’t—when it became clear that Dio had done all his punching—Will looked away. He had a headache, he realized. A hangover that, after having been suppressed by the fantasy of a new life, was now gunning to wreak havoc on his morning.

  He said, “This is humiliating. This is just really fucking humiliating.”

  “Hey, take it easy.”

  Will didn’t respond. He crawled off the bed and pushed past Dio into the yacht’s galley. He shouldered his backpack and searched through a small refrigerator for a bottle of water. There wasn’t one; the only things he could find were one of the cans of Alfa left over from the day before and some orange juice. He thought for a moment, imagining the way the beer might calm his pounding head. Instead, he reached for the juice—one of those quaint European cartons with a tear-away foil top. What he wouldn’t give, he thought, for something obtrusive, and fake, and American. One hundred and twenty-eight ounces of Sunny Delight, in a giant plastic jug.

  “You don’t get it,” he said. “I have nothing to do back in California. My friends, they all graduated with these jobs at banks, or nonprofits, or Snapchat or something. Me, though? I’ve got nothing. Literally nothing.”

  “Maybe you should stop comparing yourself to everyone else.”

  “Oh, knock it off. The only people who ever say that are smug assholes and Buddhist monks.”

  “You think I’m a smug asshole?”

  “Well, you’re certainly not a Buddhist monk.”

  He finished the juice in two swigs, holding it in his mouth a second too long before swallowing. Finally buttoning his shirt, Dio explained that this had happened once before, two summers ago, with a kid named Jeff from Evanston, Illinois; that while they hadn’t spent quite as long together as he and Will had, Jeff nonetheless succumbed to the same endless-summer fantasies.

  “That’s comforting,” Will said. The acid from a hundred oranges raged against his gums. “It’s wonderful knowing I’m a notch on a belt.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  He didn’t ask him to elaborate. He tossed the empty carton into the sink, and he left.

  There was a moment when he considered telling him about his father’s book. Dio was staring at him, waiting for an explanation, and Will nearly told him everything; he wanted him to know why going home wasn’t an option, wanted him to know he wasn’t just another kid with a crush. Now he’s glad he didn’t. He’s glad he didn’t buy into the belief that, in divulging a secret, he could somehow bind himself and Dio together; that by letting Dio have a part of him he would be creating an irrevocable bond. To do so would have been naïve, and he can see that now; instead of a bond, there would have been one more truth that was no longer Will’s. A story that Dio could shape however he chose and tell to whomever he wanted.

  Jeff from Evanston. Maybe he’ll give him a call, he thinks, as a gull goes to town on the scraps of his tempelopita. Track him down and hit him up for a chat. See if he wants to talk about guys on Aegina named after loutish Greek gods. Local losers who, shackled by their own country’s orthodoxy, agree to suck only tourist dick.

  But then, no—that’s not it, either, is it? Resting his elbows on his knees, he remembers what Dio said to him: the churn of tourists coming in and out. The monotony of standing in one place while the world around you turns; the horror of having to stare at the same tired faces every time a cruise ship hauls out of port. No, Will realizes, Dio had not preyed on him, and to think otherwise was a fantasy in itself. A fairy tale in which Will was interesting and desirable, in which his greatest accomplishment was something more than almost getting a job naming potato chips. The truth, he realizes now, is that Dio was bored. Profoundly and stupidly bored. Will provided a solution, however temporary, not because of who he was, but because he was there.

  To that end, if there’s anyone who’s capitulated to vulgar fetishes, it’s Will. And not just with Dio, but with all of it: the islands sinking in the sea; the myth of some personal renaissance hiding in a bottle of Mythos. His parents, with their notions of language, literature, and history, have taught him to scorn tourism, the admit-one voyeurism of the Other—it was why, Sue Ellen said, they would never go to Santorini or Mykonos. The Wrights were travelers; they didn’t use maps or take pictures—instead, they lived. How, though, was that any better? Weren’t they all after the same thing? A desperate flash of transcendence, the possibility that seeing an old church, a different sunset, might send them home somehow changed? Any differences that exist are cursory, a matter of aesthetics and staging: a girl with a selfie stick is content to have an epiphany among the hordes of Monastiraki. Will, meanwhile, requires Polly. Requires a voice, sweet and heavy with wine, telling him that he’s new. Dio was right—this isn’t his life. And yet, here he is, plundering from it anyway. Tearing it apart, looking for something to save him.

  * * *

  The cab stops outside the Alectrona in a cloud of red dust, and after handing the driver a ten-euro note, Will slips his backpack over one shoulder and slams the door. He needs to take a shower. Something to wash away the grime, and salt, and whatever traces of Dio still cling to him. When he enters the inn’s foyer, though, he hears a rustling from the dining room, then his father’s voice, calling his name. The sound causes Will to bristle, not just because it surprises him but also because of its timbre—a peculiar, idiosyncratic lilt that Will, like all sons of oversize fathers, uses to gauge if there’s trouble ahead. He tries, in this case, to ignore it; instead, he focuses on what Dean has done. Dropping his backpack to the floor, he heads down the hall. As he walks, he whips together a diatribe to the beat of his gait—each step another word in how he’ll dress down his dad: You. Stole. My. Life, and You. Are. A. Creepy. Fuck. As he gets closer and closer to the dining room, though, the rhetoric of prose gives way to poetry, and then to a genre not yet defined. A sort of free-verse accumulation of verbs and nouns and sputtered, melodramatic accusations. Stopping outside the dining room’s threshold, he takes a breath and tries to rearrange his thoughts. He thinks of the times his father punished him whenever he screwed up as a teenager—how, after laying down Will’s sentence, Dean would look at him coolly and express his sincerest disappointment. Those two words were, weirdly, the most painful punishment of all. And not because he actually thought Dean considered him a disappointment, but rather because they planted a seed, a germ of an idea that caused Will to worry that—maybe, actually—he was.

  Now, taking a deep breath, he pushes open the door. Dean sits at one of the room’s five tables, accompanied by an open bottle of white wine and a single glass. Before him are the unstapled pages of a story, spread out like shrapnel. While Will can’t read everything from where he stands, there are a few key words that jump out at him: Laundromat, and the name Mo. His heart in his bowels and his stomach in his throat, he scans the sheets and finds the story’s first page. There, finally, he sees it: his name—Will Wright—typed out in the upper left-hand corner, right alongside the thesis’s due date and his professor’s name. An admission of g
uilt, he thinks, in twelve-point, Times New Roman font, formatted courtesy of the MLA.

  He says, “Shit.”

  “I’ll say.” Dean reaches for the bottle and pours himself a glass. “You want some of this? If I drink the whole thing on my own I’ll get heartburn, and yesterday I ran out of Tums.”

  “What? Jesus, Dad, no, it’s like three o’clock in the afternoon. How the—how the hell did you get my thesis?” Will pinches his eyes shut. “Fucking Ginny.”

  “First things first, Will: This is not your thesis. It is a story of mine that you stole and turned in as your thesis. And in terms of who gave it to me … I will neither confirm nor deny that it was Ginny Polonsky.”

  “Aside from Claudia Min, she was literally the only person who had it.”

  “I will … not deny that it was Ginny Polonsky.”

  “I swear to God, the next time I see her I’m going to kill her.”

  “No one’s going to be killing anyone. What we are going to do, though, is sit down and talk about this … this plagiarism of yours.” Dean takes a sip from his glass and shakes his head. “I mean, Jesus, Will, why’d you do it? I could have gotten you an extension! I could have helped you write something of your own!”

  Will’s jaw goes slack.

  He says, “You have got to be kidding me.”

  Dean looks at him, quizzically.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I finally read your book.”

  His father’s face brightens—“Oh!”—and then darkens—“Oh.”

  “Christ, Dad! Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think I wouldn’t read it?”

  “In all fairness, kiddo, it’s been four years and you still haven’t finished The Brothers Karamazov.” Dean rubs the back of his neck. “But did you…”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you like it? I mean, did you think it was good?”

  “I’m not answering that question.”

  “Your opinion is important to me!”

  “You’re disgusting.” Will kicks a chair, and the sound of it toppling to the floor startles his father: Dean flinches in his seat. “What’d you do? Hire someone to follow me? Follow me yourself?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You know I think Dolores Park is for hippies.”

  “So you broke into my computer, then. Awesome.”

  “I did.” Dean sighs. “Which I guess means we’re even.”

  “We’re not even, Dad. We’re fucking not.” Will is yelling. “Did it ever occur to you to help me? Did it ever occur to you that I was putting myself in danger, and I needed your help?”

  Dean looks away from him.

  He says, “I didn’t want to be a helicopter parent.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “You’ve mentioned that already.”

  “Well, let me mention it again: you’re disgusting.” He points at his father, then digs his hands into his hair. “I fucking worshipped you, Dad. I wanted to be you. And then, even when I knew I never could be, I was at least happy enough to be your son. I figured living in your shadow was better than not living with you at all. Jesus, even after everything you did to Mom, I told myself that you were still okay. That you were a person, and people make mistakes. But you’re not a person, Dad. You’re a leech. You’re not just cynical, or well-read, or talented. You’re not one of the enlightened few who gets it. You’re just a fucking leech.”

  Dean drinks his wine and then, slowly, he looks up.

  He says, “I mean, in my defense, you labeled that folder Anatomy and Physiology.”

  Will’s exhausted. Sweat and spit coat his chin. He asks, “What’s your point?”

  “You never took that class. You were afraid of having to dissect a fetal cat. You took AP biology instead.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I got curious!”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do? You named your folder Unpublished Stories!” Will presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “And Jesus, Dad, you killed me off! You stole my life, and then you killed me off!”

  “You’re being way too hard on yourself. Some of the best characters in literature die. Think of that poor girl in Little Women, the one who ends up getting scarlet fever.”

  “You can’t even remember her name.”

  “You get my point,” Dean says. “Besides, can’t you see this as an act of love? You’re always saying that I never like what you write, but here it is—in a book!”

  “It’s not love, Dad. You’re just fucking lazy. I mean, did it ever occur to you that I might want to use those stories myself? That I might want to turn them into something of my own? Christ, to that end, what else have you stolen from people? Is any of this book your own?”

  Dean looks into his empty wineglass.

  “All art is appropriation,” he says.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “What was that girl’s name?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That girl from Little Women. It’s killing me that I can’t remember her name.”

  There’s a cough that comes from the bathroom, then a woman’s voice.

  “It’s Beth,” it says.

  Dean covers his face with his hands.

  He says, “Shit.”

  “Who is that?” Will looks at his father, who is now shaking his head. “Dad, I recognize that voice. Who is that?”

  Dean doesn’t answer him, but only because he doesn’t need to: Will knows who it is. On top of the voice’s recognizable qualities—its knowing swing, its smug rhythm—he can only think of one person who wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to call out the name of a Louisa May Alcott character from the bathroom. One person who, on the shittiest of shitty days, could manage to make things just a little bit shittier. Pushing the door open, he confirms his suspicions: Ginny Polonsky is there, sitting on the toilet with her knees pulled to her chest. Both her shoes are untied and in her right hand she holds a soda—a grape Fanta that, from the looks of the sickly purple syrup dripping from the ends of her hair, has recently exploded.

  She says, “Wait, just so we’re on the same page: You both plagiarized each other?”

  “Ginny, please tell me you aren’t really here.”

  “It’s a pleasure to see you, too, Will.”

  She pushes off the toilet and marches past him. In a heap on the floor next to the sink lies her rucksack, its leather cracked and folded.

  “What the hell is he talking about, Dean?” she says. “You didn’t actually write that book?”

  Dean rubs his bald spot. Once he’s stopped, he doesn’t remove his hand—he just keeps it there, poised on top of his head like a helmet.

  “I thought I told you to stay in the bathroom until the coast was clear,” he says.

  “It was stuffy, and you know I suffer from claustrophobia.” She sits at the table across from him. “Answer my question.”

  Now it’s Will who steps in: “Someone needs to tell me what the fuck is going on. Someone needs to tell me what the fuck she’s doing here.”

  “I have a name, you know,” Ginny says. “And, besides, you’re the one who told me where you were.”

  “That wasn’t an invitation to fly halfway around the world.”

  She says, “Actually, Madagascar would have been halfway around the world.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Well, it’s true. I looked it up on an app before I left.” She looks down at her fingernails. “Greece is only about seven-eighths of the way there.”

  Will locks gazes with her for a moment, waiting for her to blink. She doesn’t, though. She just keeps staring at him with this sort of wild, confused look, her head cocked slightly to the left like she’s a parrot on a bender. How, her eyes beg, could you not have known such a simple geographic fact?

  “I’m getting a drink,” he says.

  “Get me another bottle of wine,” Dean says. “
Nothing too sweet.”

  “How about you get your own damn wine?”

  “How about you do what I say before I knock your head in?”

  “You’re a charming drunk. Has anyone ever told you that?” Dean doesn’t answer, so he turns to Ginny. “And what about you, Miss Polonsky? Care for a drink? One of your performative Jim Beams, perhaps?”

  She chews on one side of her lip.

  “I can’t drink,” she says.

  “We both know that’s not true, Ginny,” Will says. “Need I remind you of your spectacular performance at Ernie Castle’s Halloween party last year?”

  Now, she looks at him.

  “You don’t understand. I. Can’t. Drink.”

  Dean taps the base of his wineglass on the table. “For the love of God, Ginny, have a bourbon.”

  She whips her head around and clears the hair from her face.

  “Are you kidding me?” she says. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  From where he’s standing, Will watches them as they watch each other: the anger and betrayal lurking in Ginny’s eyes; the detached resignation of Dean’s slouch. He’s confused for a moment, but then something clicks into place. A realization that’s as repulsive as it is absurd—one that convinces him that he’s not just standing on the brink of madness, but has rather spelunked into it, where he’s currently dangling by a very thin rope. Below him, he imagines, is an endless assortment of Deans and Ginnys—a teeming mess of limbs, and ova, and inescapable red hair.

  “Oh, my God. You knocked her up.”

  Ginny says, “I wish you wouldn’t be so vulgar about it.”

  “So it’s true?”

  Dean moves his hand. He works it down from his bald spot, to his forehead, to his eyes, which he covers.

  He says, in a tone that’s as confessional as it is meek: “I made a mistake.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Will says. “A mistake is, like, wearing mismatched socks, or taking the Bay Bridge at rush hour. Jasmine was a mistake. You didn’t make a mistake this time, Dad. You made a baby. Jesus, this is so fucked.”

  “I made a zygote.” He shakes his head, his eyes still covered. “Please. We don’t need to get sentimental about this. We don’t need to start throwing around terms like baby.”