Santorini Sunsets

by Anita Hughes

  * * *

  Daisy hiked up the path to the villa and sat on a wooden bench. She glanced at the hot sun and clear blue ocean and a silver cruise ship. Old women carried baskets of cherry tomatoes and a yellow taxi navigated the narrow road.

  She remembered telling Robbie that Brigit and Nathaniel were perfect for each other and flinched. She was determined that Nathaniel wouldn’t ruin Brigit’s wedding, but how could she say something so foolish? Brigit and Blake were like Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, everyone stopped when they entered a room.

  She plucked a daisy from the side of the road and resolved not to talk to Robbie alone again. She pictured his dark curly hair and large brown eyes and sighed. It was unfortunate because he had a lovely English accent and the fried eggs with green onions he’d ordered was delicious.

  * * *

  Sydney stood at the window and let out her breath. Everyone had told her Santorini sunsets were exquisite and she must pack sensible shoes so she could hike to Oia and see the whole caldera lit by a purple flame. But no one mentioned that the sunrises were just as spectacular. She gazed at the shimmering ocean and tile roofs and thought it was as if you’d emptied a paint box and all that was left was blue and orange and yellow.

  It wasn’t even eight a.m. but Francis had already slipped on a pair of shorts and a shirt and mumbled he was going to make some early morning calls. Sydney calculated the time difference in New York and thought it was unlikely any stockbrokers or bankers would be in their offices at midnight. But he had that look on his face that didn’t allow her to ask questions so she turned over and pretended to go back to sleep.

  Now she gathered the remnants of last night: a bottle of cognac they’d brought upstairs after the party, a red Armani tie draped over an armchair, the silk nightie Francis had slipped off her shoulders.

  She hung her Jil Sander sheath in the closet and pictured the dining room of the villa filled with their closest friends. She had glanced around at Brigit in her pink satin gown and Daisy in a long embroidered dress and Francis wearing an impeccably tailored pin-striped blazer and thought it was easy to be happy.

  Daisy really did look beautiful, her hair falling in long curls and tied loosely with a silk ribbon. Sydney bit her lip and hoped her designs would be a success.

  She remembered Francis catching her eye while he gave his toast and for a moment the odd tenseness of the last ten months was erased. The whole night was perfect: dancing with him to Frank Sinatra, the constant sound of laughter and glasses clinking, Brigit’s flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.

  It had been so long since she’d seen Brigit with her customary bounce to her step. She pictured her at three years old on the stone porch at Summerhill. She remembered her skipping down the steps until she reached the pond. She’d wobbled on the grassy banks and clapped wildly at the ducks.

  She thought about the tennis trophies she won as a teenager and the gold diplomas with the honors tassels from Dartmouth and Columbia. She pictured the afternoon she and Nathaniel burst into the Park Avenue town house flashing the diamond-and-sapphire ring and Sydney thought Brigit looked so in love.

  Sydney folded her silk nightie and remembered the time two years ago when Brigit pulled up the driveway at Summerhill. It was a Friday afternoon and Sydney stood on a ladder, trimming the trellises.

  * * *

  “Darling, I wasn’t expecting you and Nathaniel until tonight.” Sydney climbed down from the ladder. “I’ve collected vegetables from the garden. We’re going to have tomato soup and zucchini lasagna and blackberry tarts for dessert.”

  “Nathaniel isn’t coming.” Brigit approached the porch. She wore a beige linen suit and narrow pumps and carried a Tory Burch clutch.

  “I know he’s been working odd hours on the novel, but I was hoping you’d both join us this weekend. The Whites’ daughter is getting married next week and we’re invited tomorrow for steak and oysters.” She fiddled with a rose. “I thought being married to a stockbroker was difficult. Francis is always getting up with Tokyo and going to bed with Zürich. I can count on one hand the number of breakfasts that haven’t been interrupted by a frantic client because the market was closing somewhere and the stocks were plummeting.”

  “Nathaniel isn’t coming at all,” Brigit said slowly. “He walked out of the apartment, he’s not coming back.”

  Sydney glanced at Brigit and noticed her cheeks were pale and her blond hair had escaped its clip. She took her arm and led her into the living room.

  “Sit down and tell me everything.”

  “I come home at night and never know his mood.” Brigit sat on the paisley love seat. “Sometimes he says his fingertips are on fire and he’s going to be the next Faulkner. Lately he’s slumped on the sofa with a bottle of whiskey and a comic book.

  “Yesterday I suggested he bring his laptop to Summerhill so I could read his new chapters,” Brigit continued. “He said there were never going to be any new chapters if I kept hovering over his shoulder like the evil witch in Snow White.”

  “He probably spent the night at his parents’ apartment,” Sydney replied. “Call him and tell him he can drive out with your father tonight.”

  “When I came home from work this afternoon his duffel bag was gone and his drawers were empty.” Brigit twisted her hands. “He left a note that he was wrong, he’d never be Steinbeck or Thomas Wolfe. He couldn’t even write a decent James Patterson thriller.”

  “Nathaniel has always been temperamental,” Sydney mused. “Do you remember when you were children and you got the part of toad in The Wind in the Willows? He refused to participate if he wasn’t the lead. You finally told the camp counselor you didn’t want to wear a costume with warts. The day before the performance he came down with a mysterious stomachache and you ended up playing the part.”

  “He didn’t even know the lines,” Brigit murmured. “He would have been a much better frog.”

  “Once your father lost a good client and wouldn’t answer my calls,” Sydney continued. “I tracked him down to the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis sampling every kind of Bloody Mary. I ordered steaks and a baked potato to soak up the vodka and took him home.”

  “That’s not all the note said. He told me to keep the apartment,” she whispered. “He said it was a gift from his parents to us and it was the least I should have.”

  Sydney glanced at the dark wood floors and white wool rugs and pink marble fireplace. She saw the high-beamed ceilings and french windows opening onto the lawn. She thought of all the wonderful moments they’d celebrated in this room: Daisy’s acceptance into Swarthmore, Brigit’s entrance into the law review, her and Francis’s twenty-fifth anniversary with a black-tie dinner including the governor of New York.

  “Marriage is all about luck.” She leaned against the floral cushions. “You tried as hard as you could.”

  “Marriage isn’t anything to do with luck,” Brigit retorted. “It’s about commitment and love and hard work.”

  “Of course it’s about luck, do you think things would be different if Nathaniel’s book of short stories was a success and he was the toast of New York?” Sydney asked. “He’d be giving talks every night at the New York Public Library and the Strand bookstore. You’d attend literary soirees full of Pulitzer Prize winners and congratulate each other on being so clever.”

  “He’s worried about the new novel,” Brigit explained. “He can’t write a sentence without erasing it.”

  “He lost his nerve. If the short stories ended up on the New York Times Best Seller list, he’d finish this novel faster than a speed typist.” Sydney finished her drink. “Marriage is just like life, it needs luck to survive.”

  Sydney fiddled with her glass and thought of the day her marriage ran out of luck, on her forty-second birthday at Le Bernardin. She glanced at a family portrait above the marble fireplace and remembered when she’d met Francis, at the International Debutante Ball.

  It was the most exclusive debutante ball in New York and the
Waldorf Astoria ballroom was filled with Astors and Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. Sydney stood in a corner, sipping champagne with crème de cassis. She wore an ivory Oscar de la Renta gown with a pink sash. Her blond hair was brushed to her shoulders and she wore a diamond necklace.

  “I can’t imagine why your date left you alone when the band is playing ‘Fly Me to the Moon.’” A young man had approached her. He wore a white tuxedo and had a pink rose in his buttonhole. “He’s practically asking someone to steal you away.”

  “I can dance with whomever I like,” Sydney replied, noticing he was very tall and had a dimple on his chin.

  “At the International Debutante Ball?” He raised his eyebrow. “I read the rule book. Every girl has two dates, a military officer and a civilian, and other men have to ask their permission to dance.”

  “One of my dates twisted his ankle and the other was allergic to oysters,” Sydney admitted. “I seem to have ended up alone.”

  “In that case, may I?” Francis held out his arm. “I have two left feet when it comes to fast dancing but I’m quite good at a waltz.”

  After they danced to Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole they made their way to the buffet. They filled their plates with stuffed mushrooms and glazed duck and sat on the bottom of the grand circular staircase.

  “I have one semester left at Harvard and then I’m going to join the family stockbroking firm. It’s on the fifty-fourth floor of the Chrysler Building with a view of the East River.” Francis nibbled a canapé. “I enjoyed playing football on Boston Commons and eating clam chowder at Boston Chowda in Faneuil Hall but I could never live in New England. The bars close at midnight and everyone talks as if they have a head cold.”

  “I’ve lived in the same Park Avenue town house my whole life,” Sydney said. “My mother thinks the entire world consists of Saks and the Metropolitan Museum and the dining room at the Carlyle. I like Manhattan but I prefer the country. I’m happiest at Summerhill.”

  “Summerhill?”

  “It’s my grandparents’ cottage in East Hampton,” Sydney explained. “The house is a hundred years old with a barn and a pond. When you stand on the porch you can see the Long Island Sound.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” Francis murmured.

  Sydney studied his light brown hair and blue eyes and felt her chest tighten.

  “Maybe I can show it to you.”

  * * *

  Every weekend in the spring Francis drove his brown Jaguar from Boston to New York. Sydney squeezed her classes at Barnard into four days so they could take long weekends in Vermont and Cape Cod. She sat in the passenger seat with her hair wrapped in a Hermès scarf and thought she really was lucky. She was twenty-two and falling in love.

  Francis proposed the day after graduation and they got married on New Year’s Eve in the ballroom where they’d met. Sydney stood at the window of her suite at the Waldorf Astoria in her Givenchy gown and saw the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and the red and green lights on the Empire State Building and thought the whole city was celebrating their marriage.

  * * *

  Sydney fiddled with her earrings and remembered the night of her forty-second birthday. Brigit had just graduated from Spence and was spending three weeks at a language school in Paris. Daisy had at the last minute decided to be a counselor at a summer camp in Maine.

  “Darling, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” Sydney had said, when the maître d’ led them to the table.

  The gold tablecloth was set with a crystal vase of pink roses and a bottle of vintage Moët & Chandon. A rectangular box was wrapped in gold tissue paper and tied with a pink ribbon.

  “Do you remember when we met at the International Debutante Ball?” Francis asked. He wore a white dinner jacket and his salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back.

  “Everything in the room was gold and pink: the gold centerpieces and pink-and-gold floral arrangements and gold inlaid china. You wore an ivory silk gown with a pink sash and I thought you looked like a princess.”

  Sydney opened her mouth to say something but Francis pressed the gold wrapping paper into her hand.

  “Brigit is going to Dartmouth and Daisy will graduate in two years,” he began. “I’ve been thinking about the stockbrokerage and it’s time to turn it over to someone else.”

  “You’re forty-three,” Sydney replied. “You’re hardly going to spend your days at the Carlton Club having two-martini lunches.”

  “I know we contribute to the New York Public Library and the Guggenheim. But I want to do something for children who have never owned a book or seen a painting,” Francis said. “I want to start a charitable foundation and travel to Asia and Africa and build schools and libraries.”

  “You want to leave the firm?” Sydney’s eyes were wide and a pit formed in her stomach.

  “I’ve thought about this for a long time. The best part is once Daisy graduates we could travel together.” Francis poured two glasses of champagne. “We could see the whole world, not just the lobby of the Grand Hotel in Rome or the dining room in the Connaught in London.”

  Sydney gazed at the baked snapper and charred green tomatoes and suddenly wasn’t hungry. She looked at Francis and bit her lip.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “What did you say?” Francis gasped.

  “It was Mother’s Day weekend, you brought me Belgian waffles and strawberries and fresh squeezed orange juice.” Sydney looked up. “We left the tray on the bedside table and spent the whole morning in bed.”

  “But I thought you couldn’t…” Francis’s cheeks turned pale.

  “Get pregnant because I’m too old?” Sydney smoothed her hair.

  She thought of the years after Daisy was born when they’d tried so hard to have a boy. Francis longed to teach a son to fish and take him to baseball games at Yankee Stadium. But nothing happened and finally they agreed they were too old for diapers and sleepless nights.

  Francis ate a bite of pan-roasted monkfish and sautéed mushrooms. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and looked at Sydney.

  “Well, that is exciting news.” He clutched his champagne glass. “You’re as beautiful as you were eighteen years ago, you’re going to be a wonderful mother all over again.”

  “You can still start the foundation,” Sydney urged. “I can manage a baby on my own.”

  “It can wait. You didn’t open your gift.” Francis pointed to the gold box.

  Sydney untied the pink ribbon and took out a diamond bracelet with an emerald charm of a globe.

  “It’s spectacular.” She fastened it around her wrist.

  “It was all the places we were going to go.” Francis’s shoulders tensed and he suddenly looked older. “I’ll take it back and get something else.”

  “Of course I’ll keep it.” Sydney gazed at Francis’s blue eyes and the dimple on his chin and a smile lit up her face. “I can’t think of anything I’d like better.”

  * * *

  Sydney zipped up a beige Eileen West dress and walked back into the bedroom. She thought of everything that had come afterward and shuddered. A Belgian chocolate wrapper lay on the bedside table and she realized she was starving.

  She was going to go downstairs to the kitchen and have dark coffee and fruit and yogurt with honey. She suddenly pictured Francis, his cheeks tan from the Greek sun and his eyes sparkling and thought maybe their luck had changed and everything would be different.

  Chapter Five

  BRIGIT CLIMBED THE STEEP PATH to the villa and stopped to catch her breath. She gazed at the white houses and sharp cliffs and endless blue ocean. The sun glinted on stained-glass windows and she thought it was going to be a perfect day.

  Blake had finally emerged from the library at two a.m. and they sat in the kitchen and talked about the dinner party and Blake’s friends and how Ryan Reynolds liked brussels sprouts but hated sweet potatoes.

  They crept up the circular staircase to her bedroom and locked the door behind them. Blake unzi
pped her pink Dior gown and ran his hands over her breasts. Brigit took the clip out of her hair and drew him onto the bed.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him on top of her. Blake kissed her mouth and her stomach and her thighs. Brigit waited for the warm rush and then the long exquisite release. She tucked herself against his slick chest and felt completely happy.

  * * *

  It was three days before the wedding and in a few hours they would host a picnic on Kamari Beach. She walked back to the villa and suddenly thought of Nathaniel’s present on the mahogany coffee table. She wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of returning it. She’d ship it back with the other gifts to their new apartment on Madison Avenue or Blake’s house in the Hollywood Hills.

  She opened the wooden gate and saw a familiar figure sitting on the stone step. He wore navy shorts and a yellow T-shirt and his blond hair was damp with sweat.

  “What are you doing here?” Brigit asked.

  “I went on a hike and suddenly had a craving for poached eggs and whole wheat toast and grilled tomatoes,” Nathaniel replied.

  “You’re in Greece.” Brigit smoothed her skirt. “Every café in Fira serves eggs for breakfast.”

  “They’re more expensive than the Mansion Restaurant on York Avenue,” Nathaniel grumbled. “Our bed-and-breakfast was supposed to serve a continental breakfast, but it’s a single serving of Froot Loops and a carton of cranberry juice. You know how irritable I get if I don’t eat a good breakfast.”

  “You can’t come in.” Brigit glanced at the french doors. “Blake will be down soon and he’s not meeting my ex-husband over eggs and Santorini cherry tomatoes.”

  “Isn’t it bad luck for Blake to spend the night?” Nathaniel asked. “You wouldn’t let me see you before the wedding. I snuck into your room at Summerhill and you almost kicked me out.”

  “I don’t believe in superstitions anymore,” Brigit bristled. “I have to go, we’re having a picnic on Kamari Beach.”

  “I’m glad you’re having sex. God knows, failure is terrible for the libido. Mr. and Mrs. Glassman in 4A were getting it more than we were,” Nathaniel replied. “What’s Blake like in bed? I read he’s very athletic.”