by Lynn Freed
“Are you joking?” cried Bess. “I hope you’re joking, because if you aren’t, you’re just being a bitch.”
“Gott! Did you hear that?” Dania turned to me. Color had risen to her cheeks and neck.
“Of course she heard it!” Bess shouted. “She’s sitting right next to you, for God’s sake!”
I didn’t want to be pulled in, and I didn’t want to talk about money either. “I’m going for a walk,” I said, standing up. And before anyone could think of joining me, I added, “Alone.”
* * *
à gg, Greece
It took Wilfred, Bess’s son, to chase off her new lover. He’s always been resentful of her lovers, she says—resentful of everything, especially being left so often with Gladdy. As far as Bess is concerned, he was better off with Gladdy, they both were. She herself had never had any interest in children, her own or anyone else’s. Why, she asks, do women claim to fall in love with them so automatically? She didn’t. She didn’t even try.
So now she is not only without a lover, she’s also without money. And clearly she blames Wilfred for both, somehow. Were he more appealing, one could feel sorry for him with such a mother but, as it is, it’s Bess I feel sorry for. There is something enviable in her particular brand of unapologetic selfishness. What she wants she wants with a passion. Perhaps she’d once wanted the father of her children this way, or even the children themselves, although I rather doubt that.
Dania, on the other hand, envies none of this. And clearly feels herself superior to someone with such a son—gay, married to another man, the father of an adopted black child. What do you expect? she says. It was Gladdy who was in the place of a mother to him.
She doesn’t hear herself when she asks this, and I wonder what she sees when she looks in the mirror. When I stand in front of it, I can almost forget the eyes and the skin and the mouth as I try to disguise them with makeup. But what about what’s not in the mirror? The sag of the buttocks? The breasts? The sorrowful knees?
And what does Dania see? Once she was gorgeous, a wild-haired Magyar in her gypsy jewelry and sandals. She would slip her lovers into the house at lunchtime, when her husband was at the university and the children at school. Does she remember this now? I wonder. Does she miss anything about that time of her life?
* * *
WILFRED WAS FINISHING HIS BREAKFAST when I came into the dining room. “Want some tea?” he asked. “Gladdy!” he shouted. “Put the kettle on for another pot!”
Seeing him sitting there, commandeering not only the teapot but Gladdy along with it, I took hold of the back of a chair to steady myself. “How long do you plan to stay on the island?” I said.
He lifted his chin at me. “As long as it takes to convince Gladdy to come back with us,” he said.
“But Gladdy seems to prefer staying here, with your mother.”
“Well, she may find she has no choice. Glad,” he said, when she came in to fetch the pot, “I’d like you to look after Mohammed this afternoon while Tarq and I drive around the island—”
“Ruthi,” Gladdy said quickly, “I bring your bakkyva now? Some juice?”
“Baklava?” Wilfred raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated show. “Why didn’t you tell me there was baklava, you old tart?”
“Only one left,” she said. “For Miss Ruth.” She seemed to reserve “Miss Ruth” for crises, small or large, although Dania was always Miss Dani. Otherwise, I was Miss Ruthi or, if she felt particularly pally, just Ruthi.
“What about this afternoon then?” he said to her. “Can you do it?”
“How did you come to choose the name Mohammed?” I asked quickly, wanting to save her.
He sighed dramatically. “There’s going to come a time, you know, when he’ll be asking you how you came to be named Ruth.”
“That would be quite easy to answer,” I said, seating myself at the other end of the table.
“Glad!” he shouted, scowling at his watch. “Go and wake Ma up, please!”
She came fussing in with my baklava and juice. “Wake her up yourself, Wilfie,” she said. “Too bad for that, hey?” And off she went again, cackling to herself.
I looked over at the gleaming white houses on the hill opposite, the ancient terraces descending to the port. There were dozens of islands just like this one out there, I told myself. If it came to it, I could just pack a bag and ferry over to one of them for a few days, or a week or two. For as long as I liked.
Wilfred pushed his chair back and stood up. “Which is my mother’s room?”
I pointed down the stairs.
“Aiii!” Gladdy whispered, coming out of the kitchen when she heard him stamping down. “Big, big trouble down there!”
The front door opened and Tarquin came in, pushing Mohammed in a stroller. “Hello,” he said, “where’s Wilfred?” He was splotchy from the climb, and his coxcomb listed toward one ear. “Hello, Gladdy. Here’s Mohammed.”
Mohammed made a grab for the tassel of my dressing gown, and stuffed it into his mouth. But Tarquin came quickly around, squatting to uncurl the child’s fingers and pry open his mouth. “Ow!” he cried, jumping up and holding out his finger. “The brat bit me!”
“Who bit who?” said Bess, traipsing into the chaos in her red silk kimono. “Ah, there’s little Mustafa! Hello, boy! What’s the matter?”
“He bit me!” Tarquin said. “He could have broken the skin!”
Wilfred bustled past her into the room, reaching down for the child. But as soon as he approached, Mohammed writhed and shrieked, holding his arms out desperately to Tarquin.
“Gladdy!” Wilfred shouted. “Would you kindly take this child for a walk?”
“Gladdy’s nanny days are over,” Bess said vaguely. “One should, perhaps, have remembered that ahead of time.”
“Poisonous fucking bitch!” muttered Wilfred, splotchy himself now with fury.
Tarquin lifted the shrieking child from the stroller. “Wilfie,” he said, “let’s go!”
“Excellent idea!” said Bess.
“Indeed!” I added.
But this was too much for Wilfred. He wheeled around, narrowing his small eyes on me. “Stay out of this, you ridiculous old hag!” he hissed.
“Bess,” I said carefully, “what’s Dionysos’s number?”
She looked at me, her eyes so wide and black and her hair so gorgeously disheveled that I could see quite easily how Finn had managed to overlook her bulk. “Here,” she said, handing me her phone. “Just press three.”
I took the phone into my room and closed the door, standing with my back against it for some seconds, waiting for my breathing to subside.
Was the year going to go on like this? I wondered. Lurching from one drama to the next until it was time to leave? They were shouting out there now, Gladdy’s voice shriller even than Mohammed’s. “GO!” she was shrieking. “YOU GO NOW FROM THIS HOUSE!”
So much, I thought, for the glorious peace of old age.
* * *
à gg, Greece
Being called a ridiculous old hag by someone else’s grown child is an entirely different experience from being called that or worse by one’s own. The homegrown insult is generally a blunted instrument. Too many years of combat have gone into the blunting, and, willy-nilly, there will be more ahead. But “ridiculous old hag,” hurled by a stranger who happens also to be Bess’s nasty adult son? This has me standing before the mirror again, considering how easily the fragile triumphs of one’s life can be diminished to nothing by a threadbare insult.
I peer more closely into it. Ridiculous old hag? Why do I even care about being thought a ridiculous old hag by a nasty little man who clearly can’t stand women in the first place? Which, in his case, would be poor old Bess, who has the misfortune to be his mother.
So much of what has kept us feeling lucky here has been what I can only think of as a sort of springing, girlish hope. And much of this hope we seem to have accomplished without thought or intention, or even ac
knowledgment.
Or, at least, I have.
If, then, it can be dissolved so easily by a nasty insult, what can have been its value in the first place? And why, suddenly, considering all this, do I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all?
* * *
“WELL?” SAID BESS WHEN I handed back her phone.
“Dinny’s coming. But what’s the point if Wilfred has gone?”
“Oh, he’ll be back,” she said. “Wilfred has never been able to stand losing a fight.”
Dania peered around her door. “The coast is clean?”
She came in and fell into a chair, arms and legs splayed as if she’d run a race. In the past few weeks she’d taken on a few more patients. They were begging her, she said, what could she do? “Maybe today I give to myself as a reward a baklava,” she said.
“I ate the last one,” I said quickly, in case she thought of blaming Bess. At least Wilfred’s debit card had vanished from the table, I thought. At least that.
“Fur’s back in,” announced Bess from the window seat. “I mean real fur! Isn’t that marvelous?”
Dania gave me the look, which, as usual, Bess caught. “But really,” she insisted, “when you think of it, fake is always fake, I don’t care how close it looks to the real thing.”
“I love my fake coat,” said Dania. “Also fleece. And you can wash it in the machine.”
“How do you wash your shoes?” Bess said vaguely, turning the page. “You don’t, do you? Gladdy cleans them. And brushes the furs.”
Dania closed her eyes. She never allowed Gladdy to clean anything of hers, or even change her sheets. “I wouldn’t scoop to that,” she’d said to me.
There was a knock at the door, and in came Dionysos, trailing his customary cloud of cologne. Now that his wife was leaving us alone, we hardly remembered to lock it anymore, at least during the day.
“Yasas!” he said. “I come.”
Bess climbed off the window seat and pattered over to him.
“You got trouble, Gina?” he said.
“My son,” she whispered in the odd accent she affected with him. “He-ees-a-snake.”
He kept his black eyes soberly on hers. “He at hotel, yes?”
She laughed merrily. “Is there anything you don’t know about this island?”
“Agh!” said Dania, pushing herself to her feet. “The sun is out. Maybe I go to the bich.”
“To the bitch, to the bitch!” sang Bess. “Let’s all go to the bitch!”
But just as I was thinking that the beach wasn’t a bad idea at all, the door opened again and back came Wilfred as Bess had predicted, with Tarquin behind him, and Mohammed chirruping in the stroller.
I watched Wilfred’s glance flicker around the table, avoiding me, and settling finally on Dionysos. “Dr. Wilfred Saunderson,” he said, walking around to him, holding out his hand.
I’d forgotten he was a doctor, it seemed so entirely improbable. And even though Bess had pointed out that he was only a dermatologist, still it was awful to think of him touching people with those small, white, fastidious fingers.
Dionysos took the hand deferentially, lifting himself slightly off his chair. “Yasas,” he said.
Wilfred coughed a little, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and holding it to his nose.
“Ruthi?” said Dania, standing up. “You want to go to the bich?”
“Aii!” cried Bess. “Don’t abandon me, Ruth!”
It was the sort of moment I was always trying to avoid—having to choose between them. But Dania wasn’t waiting for my answer. She walked off to her room, returning after a few minutes with a beach towel and the black portmanteau she carried everywhere. “I’ll take the car,” she said. “I have with me my phone. Maybe you can ask Dionysos to bring you there in his car.”
Again Wilfred flapped the handkerchief. “Whew!” he coughed as soon as she’d gone. “What is it our Golda Meir has doused herself in? Sheep dip?”
“Wilfred,” said Bess. “Where is Turkey? Mustafa is climbing into the spa.”
* * *
Ruth, dear, Amy’s come up with an idea! Considering the responses we’ve been getting to the more snarky offerings, how would you feel if we changed the name of the column to “Don’t Get Me Started”? Don’t you think it fits the sort of edgy feel you’re so good at? I know this isn’t what we’d agreed on to start with, but what do you think? We think it could be a wow. It doesn’t mean, of course, that we don’t want recipes, etc. The readers adore them! If you shoot me a quick response, we’ll get started on the layout ASAP. Sxx
* * *
Good idea, Stacey. In fact, a relief. I append the latest under the new rubric. A bit low on snark, though. So, maybe you’d like to hold off until the next? Ruth
* * *
DGMS, Greece
The Mediterranean diet has been receiving a lot of press lately, especially in places like London and New York. But what the zealots of the you-are-what-you-eat brigade don’t seem to understand is the life that goes with the diet—the long-established habits and associations, the rhythms, the priorities that don’t include a Pilates class or even divorce court.
On the island of Ikaria, for instance, inhabitants, renowned for their longevity, sleep late, work hard, take long naps, make love until they die, die long after the age of ninety, spend lots of time before they do with friends, drink goat’s milk, coffee, wine, a tea made of wild herbs, and eat mostly beans, greens, potatoes, olive oil, and honey. The island has become famous for its style of life since one of its inhabitants—having emigrated as a young man to America, contracted cancer there, and been given six months to live—returned to his parents’ home to die. And lived on there for another thirty-six years, outlasting even his American doctors.
We had read about this man before we arrived in Greece and thought we might have a go at his style of life. But we failed almost from the start. How, for instance, do you force yourself to stay asleep until 11 a.m.? Or to fall asleep in the first place when, night after night, you are in a fight to the death with insomnia? Even if I try an afternoon nap, I just lie there, wide awake, thinking of how much I’d rather be swimming, or walking, or just sitting at the edge of the veranda as we did after lunch today, all of us talking about home, and the way we have freed ourselves from the strictures and habits of the worlds we came from, so that, wherever we are, we’ve managed to be at home in our lives away from home. Here, there, anywhere.
* * *
WE ALL ENDED UP GOING to the beach, even Gladdy. There she was, down at the water’s edge, her skirt hitched up, collecting seawater in the bottle she’d brought along. It is for her bowels, Bess explained, an old African remedy.
“Remedy for what?” said Dania.
“Oh, God,” Bess muttered, laying her head on Dionysos’s thigh as if there were no reason in the world not to. “For the sorrow that cannot speak its name.”
“Constipation,” I explained.
Dionysos was pretending to concentrate on Gladdy, but I could see from the way his hand kept straying from its resting place on the towel that he was longing to stroke Bess’s hair or touch her face. As it was, he just stared dreamily down toward the water while the three of us became animated on the subject of bowels.
“I mean, what about when you’re with a new lover?” said Bess. “I was once almost ten days in the Seychelles before, at last, the sorrow came to an end.”
“Sometimes it’s the men who are neurotic like that,” said Dania. “Amos was very neurotic about it. No one could be even outside the door to hear him.”
But mention of Amos killed the fun, even for Bess, who didn’t know the full story.
“No skin from my teeth,” Dania said. “I don’t have in life this problem, thanks Gott.”
* * *
JUST BEFORE DANIA MARRIED AMOS, a woman had phoned her. “If you want to hear things about Amos,” she’d said, “meet me tomorrow and I’ll tell you.”
So Dania had gone
to meet the woman. She found her sitting in a dark corner of the café, a woman she recognized from the bank—young and sexy and cheaply dressed. On the table in front of her was a small tape recorder.
As soon as Dania was seated, the young woman switched it on. And from it came Amos’s voice—Amos saying things about her, about Dania—things so intimate, so private, so stinging, and so heartless that all she could do when it was over was to pick up her bag and leave the café.
“I had today from a woman who works in the bank a phone call about you,” she told Amos when he came home. “Tomorrow she wants to meet me, to tell me what she knows.”
Amos had to sit down in his agitation. “That woman from the bank?” he said. “She’s crazy! Don’t bother to go!”
“Crazy I understand,” said Dania quite calmly.
“Listen,” he said, “she threw herself at me. What could I do? You were away, you were gone for months.”
Dania gave him her bloodless smile.
“So, yes, okay,” he said, “okay, I went to her apartment once after work. But only once. Not even for the whole night.”
“Sit down!” Dania barked because, in his agitation, he’d sprung up and was actually tearing at his hair.
He sat down like a mouse. “It will never happen again,” he said in a small voice. “Never. I can promise you that. One night. It was nothing. She’s nothing to me.”
And that’s when Dania told him the truth. Not only did she know the affair had been going on for two years, but she’d heard the complaints he’d made about her—complaints about her, Dr. Dania Weiss, who was paying the bills and building the house—heard him say to this cheap little bank teller that she was not attractive to him. She was too old? Too wrinkled? To this bank teller? TO THIS RUBBISH YEMENI BANK TELLER!?
She’d lowered her voice then and stared at him while he squirmed and cried. “If it happens again,” she’d said, barely audible now, “if ever it happens again, you should know this: I. WILL. KILL. YOU!”
* * *
WHEN SHE’D TOLD ME ALL THIS—delivering the final sentence in the low voice of menace I’d heard her use once on a window cleaner who’d left smears across the glass—I’d stared at her, staggering suddenly under the burden of all the years of exulting I’d endured from her—the perfect life, the perfect lovers, and now this perfect Amos squirming like a mouse under his sentence of death. And the wonder of it was that, quite soon afterward, she forgot she’d ever told me. “Look it, Ruthi,” she said. “I’ve got everything I want! Wonderful house! Wonderful job! Wonderful husband!”