by Lynn Freed
* * *
Ruth, dear, we’re holding off on DGMS after all. Amy’s having second thoughts. So, back to our grannies, at least till further notice! Go for it! Sxx
* * *
à gg, Greece
Dania is as good at sleeping through the night as she is at hole-in-the-floor toilet. And she disapproves greatly of Bess’s cornucopia of sleeping pills. Still, without those pills—and, for me, my more modest supply—both Bess and I would be good for nothing after a night of no sleep. Bess is no good at falling asleep, and I’m no good at staying asleep. So Bess doses up a good hour before going to bed, lining the pills up along the edge of her bathroom shelf. And then, within ten minutes or so, off she goes, and one can hear the snoring even one floor up.
Sleep apnea, Dania pronounces with authority. Bess should go to a clinic, she says, and get one of those breathing machines.
I know a number of women who use those machines and, not incidentally, end up with a bedroom to themselves. Who, after all, can sleep with a lawn mower running? How, in fact, do the sleepers themselves manage? I suppose, once you’re hooked, you’re hooked, even to a lawn mower. As I see it, these apnerians are as hooked on their machines as Bess is on her pills.
Meanwhile, except for people like Dania and the Ikarians, the night can spell real misery for grannies without machines or pills. Even the sight of a pillow—silent, blameless, defiant—can bring on dread. In she climbs anyway—after all, what’s the alternative?—lies down, puts on her glasses, picks up her book. At least she knows she has one of Bess’s little helpers just in case. It’s cut into quarters and sitting in a saucer in the bathroom. So when, ten or thirty or even sixty minutes after falling asleep, she jumps awake again—light still on, glasses down her nose, book facedown, and heart galloping—there’s hope that she’ll survive another night of it.
* * *
JUST AS WE WERE GATHERING up our things to climb the hill to the car, Wilfred came down, carrying a large, covered basket, Tarquin following with Mohammed.
“Mohammed came to the mountain,” Bess murmured. “Hello,” she said to Wilfred, “we’re just leaving.”
“We changed our plans,” he said. “Mohammed had to have a sleep.”
She chucked the child under the chin, and he lifted his hand to touch the skin she had touched, staring shyly at her from under his lovely, curling lashes.
“Where shall we have lunch?” she said, turning to me.
But I saw the child watching her, baffled, and suddenly I longed for her to turn and scoop him into her arms, kiss his neck, make him laugh.
“We brought lunch for everyone,” Wilfred said quickly. “The hotel scrambled it together.” He pretended not to be asking, but clearly there was an invitation in the studied casualness of his voice.
“I loathe picnics,” said Bess. “And, anyway, the wind is going to start up any minute.”
I put my bag down. Never mind that Mohammed wasn’t his, it was as if I were seeing Wilfred in the child, his mother so deeply uninterested in his existence that there was nothing he could do to have her decide he might be worth the trouble of having lunch with. “I’ll take him,” I said, “if he doesn’t object.”
Gladdy looked up when I reached the water’s edge. “Hau, Ruthi, you the nanny now?”
Mohammed strained and jumped in my arms, wanting to be free to plunge into the water.
“Hang on, hang on,” I said, putting him down on the stones. But immediately he began to clamber toward the surf.
“Hai, Ruthi!” Gladdy said, hauling herself to her feet. “No more peace now!” She grasped the child expertly under his arms and plonked him between her knees, holding him in place there. “Here,” she said to him, “you play with some stones.”
He turned to look at her with the same puzzled stare he’d given Bess. And again I wished to see him scooped up and properly loved. Once, when I’d swung Hester into the air as an infant, and she’d rolled into a laugh, a real laugh, I’d grabbed her into my arms and kissed her fiercely, understanding, suddenly, the joy women were supposed to feel in their babies, and of which, until then, I had been so bereft.
So, perhaps, I thought now, this child, saddled as he was with such fathers and with his improbable name—perhaps he just needed someone to love him properly, someone to whom he’d belong more truly than he ever could to Wilfred and Tarquin.
“Lunch in five minutes!” Wilfred called down.
“What lunch?” said Gladdy.
“For all of us,” I said. “They brought it from the hotel.”
She brushed some sand from Mohammed’s hair. “What they going to do when this boy he grows too big?”
I shrugged.
“That’s what I told Wilfie. What happens when the child he asks for his own people?”
The child himself was now happily piling stones onto Gladdy’s thigh and then knocking them off.
“Well, what is going to happen?” I asked.
“The child he’s going to blame Wilfie.”
“But children blame us anyway,” I said, remembering Patience sitting grimly in the wicker chair.
She shrugged. “They are blaming their own parents. This boy he’s going to blame Wilfie. Wilfie is not a parent.”
I sat up. “Is it Wilfred you’re worried about then, or the child?”
But she just closed her lips at this, one hand still toying with a stone.
“Lunch!” Tarquin shouted. “Ruth! Gladdy!”
Gladdy handed Mohammed to me to carry back up to the picnic. I’d heard of animals behaving like this in the bush—shooing off a strange cub or calf to starve or be eaten. Or killing it themselves if they could.
“Here,” I said to Tarquin, handing Mohammed over just as he began to yell. Bowls of melitzanosalata and tzatziki had been laid out, platters of spanakopita, meatballs, tiropitas, and two bottles of wine.
“Where’s Dania?” I said. “Where’s Bess?”
“Gone,” sang Wilfred. “And Aristophanes with them. How about a glass of wine, Ruth?” he said. “Gladdy? We brought you a beer, comme d’hab.”
And so there we sat, an odd arrangement, with Gladdy leaning against the tree, drinking her beer from the bottle, Tarquin feeding Mohammed from a jar, and Wilfred and me with glasses of wine, facing out to sea.
“I’ve read two of your books, you know,” he said suddenly.
Here we go, I thought.
“That detective of yours—Steven Grim—Tarquin!” he snapped, turning around. “Can you please stop him whining?”
“Gripp,” I murmured. “Stefan Gripp.”
“But I meant to ask you,” he said, turning back, “why the war? Why not now, say?”
I shrugged. The last thing I wanted was to be pulled into a discussion of my literary choices with Wilfred.
He gave my knee a pat. “Did you ever read that book about a group of women who meet to peel potatoes? On one of the Channel Islands? Also set during the war? No? Well, you might consider it,” he said. “It really is quite amusing.”
* * *
à gg, Greece
Bess here again. This morning I asked Ruth and Dania why they’ve given up on romance.
They laughed. They often laugh when I ask things like that. Then Ruth said it was because she was sick of listening to men talk about themselves, and Dania said she gets paid to listen to people talk about themselves, so why should she listen for nothing?
Why listen to any of them? I asked. Why not just pretend to listen while you look at their hands?
Hands? they said.
But then Ruth said, In fact—she’s always saying “in fact”—she loves large, muscular, masterful hands in a man, sinewy and tanned, with a great wide grasp like the ones her old lover had, the one who was murdered. (Finn, her last lover, says the memory of that man is hard to live with—like competing with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph all rolled into one.)
Okay, I said, so what about wine?
Well, Dania hardly drinks, and clearly
she thinks she doesn’t need wine for romance or for anything else either.
But really, I said, is there anything less romantic than a man who doesn’t drink? He’s going to be a prig, or an ex-alcoholic just waiting for you to be drunk enough to push into bed.
Oh, bed! said Dania. Agh, the sagging body.
Well, who wants to see their sagging bodies? said Ruth, up in arms. Who wants to keep boosting their sagging morales? Who wants any of the sad, played-out old farce anymore? (That’s the way she talks.)
But the bodies aren’t even the point! I shouted, because Ruth’s furies can be quite catchy—it’s the idea of the bodies! Just look at Dinny and me. We’re fat, he has small, white, hairy fingers, and he even wears a truss. But when we sit across a table, laughing and eating and making our way through a second carafe of wine, who could think of anything but how lovely it all is?
* * *
BY THE TIME WILFRED AND family left the island, the three of us had sorted out Bess’s finances. What we decided was that we would revert to dividing things into thirds, never mind Gladdy, who, after all, had never even been paid for what she did for us. Dania and I would split the costs until Bess’s funds arrived from South Africa, and no one would tell Gladdy any of this. She was not to be trusted, said Bess, she’d just go and tell Wilfred or Agnes, and then they’d hear about the money from South Africa and suspend the measly debit card they were allowing her.
“As if I didn’t buy them each a house!” she cried. “As if their father didn’t set both of them up with trust funds! With my money!” She huffed down on the pillows. “I told him it was a stupid idea, but, oh no, he said, we were a ‘family’—he loved that word—and he wanted to do for them what had never been done for him. Well, of course it hadn’t been done for him—his mother killed herself when he was twelve and his father took up with the housekeeper. Men and money!” she said. “You should write a column about that, Ruth!”
Actually, it was a fine idea, balancing the one about women and money. And if I could think of a way to bring in Dania, Amos, and Wendy, there’d be a few columns’ worth. Except, of course, that Dania would never agree. And I still suffered the odd dog-in-the-manger-ish surge of resentment against Bess for snatching Finn from me.
* * *
Ruth, dear, Amy likes this last piece a lot (romance, men’s hands, etc.). But it really needs shaping. And could you please have Bess play down the alcohol? As you know, we’ve been devoting a lot of copy to breast cancer, and alcohol is one big no-no. Amy says the Ikarians must be okay because their wine is organic. Do you think you could talk Bess into substituting, say, candy for alcohol? Valentine’s Day, etc.?:) I gather you’re back on speaking terms? Frankly, I’d rather not have another go-round with her myself. Sxx
* * *
“CANDY?” CRIED BESS. “Is she serious!” She stomped off to the kitchen, and was soon back with two glasses of her favorite Sancerre, bought at great cost from the wine shop down at the port. She handed one to me. “Listen,” she said, taking a slug, “just tell that New York cow from me that she can take a running jump. Candy, for God’s sake! Organic! I ask you!”
* * *
BESS AND I WERE BACK on speaking terms. More than speaking terms, we’d even begun to laugh about Finn. And she’d picked up again with Dionysos, although it wasn’t clear whether the romance was back on, too. From time to time, they would drive off together, presumably when the wife was on another island. And then back she would come earlier than usual with stories of a baptism or a wedding and, oh, God, the lascivious priests! Her money had arrived at last as well, and so now she had her own debit card and insisted on paying us everything she’d owed. She would have paid more than she owed had we not loudly refused to take it.
“Shhh!” she’d hissed then, gesticulating toward the kitchen.
Dania threw up her hands. “But how does she think you are buying again those clothes?” she whispered. “It is impossible she doesn’t know.”
She had a point. Bess was shopping again at the old pace. She’d even found a small shop that specialized in the sort of overpriced Riviera-esque clothing she favored, and the French owner kept leaving messages with Gladdy—the sandals Bess wanted had come in, or a caftan, or a blouse.
“Wouldn’t it be better,” I said, “just to tell her?”
Bess huffed. She hadn’t forgiven Gladdy for summoning Wilfred, and Gladdy herself was huffing around in response.
Meanwhile, the sun was warmer day to day, and we were all warming up with it. Even Dania found it in her to say she was pleased Wilfred had failed to bring Bess to her knees. “Thanks Gott, Ruthi,” she said, “we don’t have such a son!”
“I don’t have any son period,” I said. “If I did, maybe he’d behave better than our daughters.”
A few days before, Yael had announced that she wouldn’t be coming in June after all. What she and the children wanted, she’d said, was the sort of time they’d had with Dania when they’d come at Christmas. What she certainly didn’t want was to be shacked up with strangers and strange children, birthday or no birthday. In fact, she’d far prefer to spend her holiday somewhere she chose to be, which wouldn’t be with strangers, etc. So, what about Santorini? she said. In fact, she’d already found a house to rent right down on the water, with the use of a yacht thrown in. Perhaps Dania would visit them there for her birthday? At least for a day or so? She’d have to share with the children, there were only two bedrooms, but she’d have her days to herself unless she wanted to go sailing with them.
“The nerves of her!” said Dania, closing her laptop. “First I must give the money for the new guest room, and now she rents for herself a yught!”
“Daniushka!” I said. “You didn’t shell out again?”
“Again what?” said Bess from her perch.
“Agh,” said Dania. “I give, I give, she’s snotty and superior.”
“But I thought she was a doctor?” said Bess.
“Research doctor,” said Dania. “Still, she makes with the job more than I do. If you ask me, we’re all crazy.”
I could see that, birthday or no birthday, the rejection had wounded her, and that money had little to do with it. Yael had unsettled her image of herself as mother and grandmother, just as Amos had unsettled her image as woman and wife. All she was left with, in the ongoing performance of her life, was the one member of the audience whose applause she’d always been able to count on, even ten or twenty years after his death: her father. “Ruthi,” she’d say, “for him I was always a star, never mind he was a narcissist.” As I saw it, it was for him she still boasted so insistently because, unless she could keep fueling the great boastful pride he had always had in her, not only could she not count her life a triumph, but she, Dania Weiss, about to enter her eighth decade, would be, as she would put it, an orphant.
* * *
à gg, Greece
Two of the children have staged a takeover. The excuse for this is our seventieth birthdays—Dania’s and mine in June; Bess’s and Gladdy’s in September—never mind that none of us wants a celebration, and certainly not one we’ll have to arrange ourselves.
We talk a lot about how to escape (yet again), but none of us, except Bess, seems to have the courage to refuse her children on this one. One might consider this charming—not wanting to disappoint the children—but the truth is that it’s not their disappointment we fear; it’s them. Or them in their disappointment. Or something.
So, what is it about this game of parent-and-child that has us playing the version of ourselves that our adult children have chosen for us? The only one, as I say, who has managed to resist this charade is Bess, and then only with her son. With him she’s offhand, careless, a sort of wayward aunt. But with her daughter she can turn into a child herself, flapping about and asking for help when clearly she doesn’t need it. Perhaps she does this without thinking—wanting to give her life-coaching daughter something to coach in her.
Who knows? And who knows
why Dania, at her daughter’s halfhearted invitation, is planning to celebrate her own birthday ahead of time on a different island? A trip involving almost a day’s travel on ferries and no small outlay of money? Because she would feel worse saying no?
And what about me? Unable to tell Hester that this celebration is anathema to me—anathema to Bess as well—never mind the habit of frankness I’ve always prided myself on with her? Quite uncharacteristically, I’ve been conducting sideways maneuvers—suggesting postponements, alternatives, lies, lies, lies—and then pretending to laugh along when she says, You’re not getting out of this one, Mum! Just like the tyrant she is.
The only one of us who doesn’t object to the takeover is Gladdy. She will bake a cake, she says, and invite her Greek friends, even the ponytailed priest. Apparently, he no longer terrifies her. She waves when she passes him on the street, a shy little schoolgirl’s wave, and he nods back with a benignant smile.
* * *
Ruth, dear, thank goodness we held off on DGMS. We did a reader survey, and they LOVE “à Go Go.” It makes them laugh, even the snarky ones.:) So should we just call it an experiment that failed? Sxx
* * *
ONE DAY, OUT OF THE BLUE, in walked Rex, and there he stood where they all stood the first time they came into the house, just beyond the threshold, gazing out through the glass doors, down toward the Aegean. “Beautiful,” he murmured, Panama in hand. And even Dania seemed to wake up at the sight of him.
“Ruth?” he said. “You must be Ruth.” He held out his hand. “I recognize you from your book photograph.”
I flushed, I couldn’t help it. He was a tall, tanned, beautifully symmetrical man with deep blue eyes, a graying head of thick wavy hair, and the slightly bemused look of a cultured and worldly European. Standing there, my hand still in his, I understood quite suddenly, and with the sort of sobriety generally brought to bear on terminal illness, that, seventy or not, I could count on no end to the sort of awkwardness that, even now, had taken over my power of speech.