The Years That Followed

by Catherine Dunne

  But three, maybe four months later, she broke that promise to herself, and the whole cycle started all over again. The thrill of the unknown, the sharp, jagged edge of danger, the satisfaction of the conquest. It all helped her to forget; it helped to fill that place where her courage should have been.

  Where her son should have been.

  Pilar buys her ticket now and boards the first train. It is almost empty: just some sad-eyed men and women on their way to, or from, some dead-end job, the kind the night city specializes in. Nobody speaks. A few people smoke. The train rattles its way towards the next stop.

  Suddenly, Pilar cannot breathe. It is as though she has a stone in her chest. Somebody’s fist is around her heart, squeezing. The light in the carriage turns blue and grainy, everything slows down, and Pilar is afraid she is going to be sick. She tries to stand, but her legs no longer work. The last thing she sees is a startled, unshaven face looming over her, the mouth making soundless words of comfort, or blame, or anger; Pilar cannot be sure.

  And then, all the rest is darkness.

  * * *

  The hospital doctor looks to be about fourteen. Pilar is shocked. How can she trust the diagnosis of a child? She struggles into sitting. She’s not sure how much time has passed since they brought her here. One day? Two? The residents of her building won’t be pleased to find her missing.

  The doctor doesn’t bother with the formalities. “You had a panic attack, Señorita Domínguez,” he says. “Your heart is fine. Your bloods are fine. When you feel up to it, you can go home.”

  “Panic attack?” Pilar looks at him blankly.

  “Yes. When you are under a lot of stress, the body can often mimic the symptoms of a heart attack. Very frightening, but essentially harmless.” He pauses and looks at her more kindly. He flips over a page on his clipboard. “What age are you, señorita?” he asks.

  “Thirty-five.”

  He frowns and looks at her more closely. “Have you been under a lot of stress lately?”

  Pilar thinks about that. “Yes,” she says slowly. “Yes, I have.”

  “I can prescribe something for you, if you like. Or we can try to arrange an appointment with the hospital psychiatrist.”

  Pilar looks at him in horror. “No,” she says. “No, I’ll be fine. I know what I need to do.”

  She isn’t going near any psychiatrist. Nor is she going to succumb to Valium or any of its sisters; she has already seen what that did to Señora Ochoa—third floor right—last year. The woman had become listless, vacant-eyed, hardly able to carry on a conversation. No, Pilar isn’t having any of that.

  She starts to get out of bed.

  “Just a moment,” the doctor begins, but Pilar holds up one hand.

  “You said I could go.” Her voice is firm, steady. “I am going home. As I say, I know what I have to do.”

  The young man shrugs. An even younger-looking nurse helps Pilar to her feet.

  “There is still some paperwork . . .” the doctor begins.

  “Fine,” Pilar says. “Where do I sign?”

  calista

  Limassol, 1974

  * * *

  It is July 10, 1974. Seven o’clock in the evening.

  Calista watches until Alexandros’s car is no longer visible, until the dust of his departure has settled, until the taillights have disappeared off into the distance. He has a meeting, he said. He will not be back before midnight. Calista waits for a few more minutes, just to be sure.

  Then she moves. She runs to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. She stumbles halfway up, banging her shin against the hardwood edging. Her hands try to save her; the outstretched palms make stinging contact with the tiles. The pain brings tears to her eyes, but she does not stop; she must not stop.

  At the top of the stairs, Calista turns right, into Imogen’s bedroom. Imogen is in her pajamas. She has just had her bath and she’s sitting on the floor, flicking through her coloring books, a bunch of pencils in one hand. Calista kneels on the floor beside her. She brushes the long, soft hair out of her daughter’s eyes and feels the familiar blade of guilt slicing her. It is intense, almost blinding.

  “I need you to stand up for me, sweetheart,” she says. “We need to get you out of those pajamas and into your dress.”

  “Why?” Imogen is unwilling to move.

  “Remember I told you we might have an adventure, just you, me, and Omiros? That we’d go off somewhere together on a mystery tour?” Calista’s hands are trembling; she can hear the crack in her voice. “Do you remember?”

  “No,” Imogen says, her tone suddenly belligerent. She twists away from her mother. “I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to do my coloring.”

  Calista feels a sob catch at the back of her throat. She can barely breathe. Something akin to gravel has lodged where her breath should begin, making her gasp and struggle for air. She grabs Monkey and thrusts the soft toy into Imogen’s arms. She cups her daughter’s face in her hands.

  “Mummyneedsyourightnowtobeareallygoodgirl,” she says. The vowels and consonants are flowing too fast; the words are waves crashing into one another, pummeling the shore that is her daughter. Calista is horrified that she is capable of reducing her child to tears. She forces herself to slow down. She manages what she hopes is a smile—although Imogen has never been one to be easily fooled. Her ability to see through to the heart of the matter has always startled Calista. She is a watchful child; not much escapes her green, level gaze.

  Calista helps her into her dress. Her fingers shake as she tries to do up the seven buttons. “I need you to wait here, sweetheart, until I come back for you. Will you do that?” Calista hates herself all over again, hates what she’s about to put her children through.

  Something odd about her mother—the strangled sob, the urgency, the trembling hands—suddenly seems to reach the little girl, and she quietens. “Yes, Mummy,” she says, her eyes huge. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

  Calista kisses the top of Imogen’s head. She gives her one more hug. “You’re the best,” she says. “Now, you and Monkey stay right here. I’ll be back in a flash; I have to go and get Omiros.”

  Once inside her son’s bedroom, Calista wrenches out the lowest drawer of the chest and turns it upside down. She has taped a plastic wallet to the wooden base, and she now rips it free. The wallet contains her passport. The airline tickets are already in her handbag in an envelope—just like an ordinary letter, innocently stamped and sealed and addressed to her mother, in case Alexandros went rummaging again. Calista had caught him going through her handbag a few weeks back. He was startled when she walked in on him, then aggressive.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “My car keys are missing.” He continued to take things out of Calista’s handbag: her purse, her lipstick, some letters from her mother. The casual deliberation of his movements was defiant, a loudness in the air between them, his shrug a portcullis that slammed suddenly shut, dividing them into their separate silences.

  “Why would your car keys be in my bag, Alexandros?” Calista asked eventually, knowing she shouldn’t, knowing this was provocation. She kept her voice quiet, calm.

  He shrugged. “You tell me,” he said. “You forget things; you move things around; maybe you take things that are not yours.” He shrugged at her, daring her. “I have the right to look in my wife’s handbag if I so choose.” His eyes were cold, his face closed to her, the way it so often was these days.

  “Your car keys are not in my bag,” Calista said. She struggled now to keep her tone even. She must not push him. “They are on the hall table, where you always leave them.”

  He threw her handbag across the table, knocking over the small vase filled with irises that Calista had picked earlier in the evening. Calista filled the house with flowers as often as she could; their perfume was an antidote to the t
oxic air that continued to build up around her.

  Now the small vase shattered, and the water pooled across the surface of the table, reflecting the delicate blooms. Calista watched its rapid progress across the polished wood, keeping her eyes averted from her husband’s. It was always best not to look directly at him at times like these. Best, too, never to move in his presence to clear up whatever mess he had just created.

  “Don’t think I don’t know,” he said on his way past. He paused and thrust his face into hers. “I am not a fool. Don’t think I don’t see what you are up to. I have eyes.” And he pushed her out of his way. Not too hard; just enough to make her stumble a little, enough to catch her off balance.

  “Alexandros,” she pleaded. She could hear the despair in her voice. “Please, why won’t you talk to me? Why are you treating me like this? I am not ‘up to’ anything at all. Please, talk to me.” Calista had already spent countless hours trying to figure out what she was doing wrong; days trying to gauge a mood, to tiptoe around her own shortcomings. Years trying to make her husband happy.

  But Alexandros didn’t answer. Instead, he walked away from her as though he had forgotten her existence. Down the long hallway he went, his back resolute, his steps steady and regular. She watched him as he made his way out to the carport. Calista waited, praying he might come back this time. He had done so on many occasions in the past, full of remorse and kisses; although those times were long gone.

  That day, Calista watched her husband’s retreating form, heard the closing of the front door, the gunning of the car engine. It was an almost animal rumbling. Alexandros kept pressing the accelerator as though he couldn’t wait to be gone, out of there, away from her. His urgency made Calista suspicious all over again.

  Lately, Alexandros seemed to come and go at odd hours, his routine changing without warning. It had made her wonder who the other woman might be. There would be no shortage, Calista knew—there were always too many young women waiting in the wings for Alexandros to notice them. Good luck to you, she thought, whoever you are.

  Calista saw her husband’s hands on the steering wheel. She imagined his fingers tapping impatiently as he waited for a car to pass. And then he was gone, clouds of yellow dust in his wake.

  * * *

  Calista stuffs the passport into the pocket of her dress and gets ready to wake her son. Omiros has begun to mooch and grizzle under his cotton blanket.

  “Hello, darling,” Calista says cheerfully. She bends down and lifts his small body into her arms, kisses him on the forehead. “Good boy,” she says, “good boy.” There is no need to dress Omiros: his sleeping suit is perfect for a two-year-old. And unlike his older sister, he needs no explanations.

  On the way out the bedroom door, Calista reaches in and pulls a suitcase from the top shelf of the wardrobe. It is already packed with their things. She moves Omiros over onto her right hip and glances at her watch. She needs to get going.

  Back in Imogen’s room, she hands the child a pink rucksack filled with her favorite belongings—some books, a sturdy cassette player, her coloring books and pencils. “OK, Imogen, let’s go.”

  Omiros is still silent, sleepy. Calista makes her way down the stairs, careful not to rush. She holds Imogen’s hand firmly in hers. The last thing she needs is for the child to stumble and fall. Once outside, the noise of the crickets is shrill: a warning that vibrates in the velvety evening air. Calista opens the door of her car and lifts Omiros in, lies him down on the backseat. He is sleeping again. Imogen climbs in beside him.

  “Where are we going, Mummy?” Imogen asks. Her small face is serious, her eyes big with questions. But there is no fear in her voice. She sounds, above all, curious, interested.

  “We are going to see Abuela María-Luisa and Grandad Timothy,” Calista says. “We’re going to pay them a visit in Ireland.” She hopes the enthusiasm in her voice is convincing. “Now,” she says, “I need you to mind Omiros. He should sleep all the way to the airport. But if he wakes, you must take him on your knee. We have to get going if we’re to catch our plane to Dublin.”

  “Is it a surprise?” Imogen loves surprises.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” Calista says. “It is indeed a surprise.”

  “Is Papa coming, too?”

  Calista doesn’t hesitate. “Later, sweetheart. Papa will follow us later, just as he always does.”

  She hurries back inside the house and grabs her handbag. She pulls the front door shut behind her and runs back to the car where her children are waiting. She needs to hurry.

  Lately, Calista has felt as though Alexandros has been testing her, as though he hopes to catch her out doing something she shouldn’t. Each time he arrives back early, Calista senses his disappointment when he finds her quietly with a book or watching television or writing letters, the children in bed, the house orderly. She watches as he tries to find fault. Either way, it can be dangerous; he becomes angry when he finds evidence of her shortcomings, angry when he can’t. When he can’t, it’s as though Calista has cheated him out of his entitlement to punish her.

  She pulls carefully away from the curb. This is the street that Petros and Maroulla live on, too, although they are several blocks away. The street, Ark Kyprianou, is filled with the beautiful, exclusive homes of the wealthy of Limassol. The houses are all large, set back from the street, surrounded by well-tended gardens. All are painted in bright, immaculate colors; their arched facades gleam in the sunlight; the wrought-iron balconies are stark and simple against the ornate plasterwork.

  Calista wonders what secrets might be hiding behind such perfect walls.

  * * *

  The airport is buzzing. There are plenty of people around, something that makes Calista feel safer. She pulls a luggage trolley out of its station and manages, with difficulty, to place her suitcase on it, along with Imogen’s rucksack. Omiros is heavy. His weight makes Calista hunch forward. Perspiration trickles down her face. She is trembling, and everything takes twice as long. Her hands refuse to obey her, and her feet don’t feel steady on the ground.

  Imogen is quiet, and her eyes never leave her mother’s face. Calista smiles at her. “Omiros is getting to be a very big boy,” she says. “It’s a good thing Abi María-Luisa keeps a baby buggy at her house; otherwise we’d never manage to get him around, would we?”

  Imogen nods gravely.

  Calista looks around. There is no sign of Alexandros anywhere. She begins to breathe. Maybe, just maybe . . .

  Calista sees the check-in gates in the distance. She pauses for a moment, retrieves the passport from her pocket, and pulls out the envelope with the plane tickets inside. She has bought them with cash—cash she has earned from the sale of her photographs. Anastasios has been as good as his word. Calista rips open the envelope and pulls out the flimsy tickets.

  “May we help you?”

  Calista looks up. Two men, one on either side of her. Almost mirror images of each other, but one is slightly taller. They each have walkie-talkies; each man is completely bald; their heads glisten. Airport officials, Calista thinks. She smiles back at them brightly. “We’re managing fine, thank you.”

  “May I see your tickets?” the taller one asks her.

  Calista hands them over. “We’re going to see my parents in Ireland,” she offers. “Isn’t that right, Imogen?”

  Imogen nods. “Yes,” she says. “Abi María-Luisa and Grandad Timothy. They live in Dublin. It’s a surprise.”

  The official scrutinizes the tickets, turning each thin page, one after the other, as though there is something new to be discovered underneath. “May I see your passport?”

  Calista hands it over. Her insides are churning. An innocent visit to grandparents; what possible reason could they have to stop her?

  “Come with us, please.”

  Already, the second man has begun to push the luggage trolley away from the depar
ture gates, all the way across the terminal.

  “Wait!” Calista cries. “What is going on?” She starts to run after the trolley, stops, turns back again to the taller man. He looks at her, his face impassive.

  “What are you doing?” Calista pulls Imogen closer to her and places a protective arm around her daughter. She holds on to Omiros as firmly as she can. “Why are you stopping me? You have no right! I demand to be taken to the police!”

  Curious knots of onlookers are already gathering, staring. Calista appeals to them. “I want to take my children to see their grandparents,” she says, desperation making her shrill. “And these men are trying to stop me!”

  “Lower your voice, madam,” the taller man says, his hand already firmly under Calista’s elbow. “You are creating a disturbance.”

  Calista wrenches her arm away, angry now. “Leave me alone!” she cries. “I insist you call the police.”

  “Madam,” the taller man hisses, his hand on her arm again, his mouth at her ear, “we are the police.”

  And then Calista sees Imogen’s face, her mouth like a huge O, the tears streaming. Omiros wakes, howling.

  And Calista knows it is over.

  * * *

  The office is small and hot, despite the air-conditioning and the fan turning constantly in the corner. Calista sits on one side of the desk, the taller policeman across from her. The passport and the tickets are spread out between them like an accusation.

  Calista sticks to her story. “I want to take my children to Ireland to see their grandparents. As you can see, I have booked return flights. I don’t understand the problem.”

  “The problem.” The policeman considers this for a moment. “The problem is, Mrs. Demitriades, that you have been attempting to remove your children from this jurisdiction against the wishes of your husband. Child abduction is a very serious matter.”

  Calista stares at him. “Abduction? These are my children! We are going to Ireland for a holiday, to see my parents! How can that be abduction?”