“Oh, good.” Daphne brought her left hand to her throat in relief. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Wearing a floor-length designer dress to a black-tie country club wedding was one thing; wearing it to a dirt-road island wedding was quite another. Daphne had never intended to wear such an elaborate gown, even before the wedding plans changed. But Stephen had surprised her with a trip to an elegant Fifth Avenue bridal salon. He took her by the hand, walked her into the salon, and asked the meticulously attired ladies to help his fiancée select a gown befitting her beauty. Then he handed the shop girl his credit card, kissed Daphne good-bye, and left her with a glass of champagne in hand and many beautiful dresses to choose from.
The morning sunshine caught her diamond ring, sending rainbow-hued flecks of light dancing across the white walls of the room. “Let me show you the back.” Daphne gently turned the dress over to show Popi the double row of tiny pearl-encrusted buttons that decorated the entire length of the gown.
Popi made the sign of the cross. “This is too much! It is too beautiful! But there is only one problem.” A glimmer of mischief returned to her face as she looked into her cousin’s eyes.
“What problem?” Daphne asked as she scanned the dress, looking for a stain or a tear.
“The problem is that no man will wait for all those buttons to be undone on his wedding day. Your beautiful gown will be ripped to pieces as he tries to get at what is underneath the dress.”
Daphne laughed. “Very funny, Popi. But Stephen is a patient man. I don’t think I have to worry about that.”
“You are crazy. No man is patient on his wedding night.”
“Well, he waited two years before I even agreed to go out with him.” Daphne moved the dress slightly and sat down on the bed next to Popi.
“Was it really that long? I don’t know which one of you is crazier—you for waiting so long to say yes, or him for waiting around so long when I was right here and ready the whole time you were playing hard to get.”
Daphne plucked a pillow off the bed and tossed it at her cousin. “I wasn’t playing hard to get. I was hard to get. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t think I ever would be.”
It was true. After losing Alex, Daphne never imagined that she would one day find love again. But somehow, despite her initial reluctance, despite all of the obstacles and complications, somehow, in some miraculous way, she had.
She remembered the first time she saw him across the expansive desk of the loan officer in the bank, where she sat fidgeting in her chair. She was desperate for the loan and for the paperwork to be filled out quickly, knowing that she couldn’t afford to pay the babysitter extra hours. Walking into the bank that day, Daphne knew the reality of the situation. If the man behind the desk didn’t see the potential of her business plan, her fate would be sealed, the legacy would continue, and she too would be condemned to a life working in diners.
As she sat pleading her case, she tried without success to read the face of the man behind the desk. There were moments of hope, when he nodded as she explained her business plan, and moments of terror as he stared back like a blank canvas. She had no idea how things were progressing; only that she was running out of time. She was annoyed at first when the door opened and the tall, immaculately dressed man with the pocket square walked into the room, apologized for the interruption, and walked over to the loan officer’s desk, handing him a stack of papers. He smiled down at Daphne, at first noticing her legs twitching under her skirt and then her black-olive eyes.
“Hi, I’m Stephen,” he said, asking for her name. She told him why she was there, praying this man in the perfectly tailored suit could help her in some way. He wished her good luck and walked out of the room. She didn’t know why, but the deep whisky baritone of his voice had instantly put her at ease.
When the phone rang a few days later and the words “You’re approved” rang in her ear, she thought of the immaculately dressed man and wondered for a fleeting moment if he had helped.
The next months flew by in a blur; planning, constructing, decorating, cooking . . . She put her heart and soul into launching the restaurant, and the man was soon forgotten—until the night he walked into her newly opened restaurant alone.
He sat in the back, savoring his lamb fricassee and taking in every nuance of the dining room. When she came out of the kitchen at the end of dinner service, she spotted him and immediately went over to welcome him to Koukla. He asked her to join him for a glass of wine and they ended up talking for hours, his intoxicating voice simultaneously transfixing and relaxing her. He proved to be a wonderful conversationalist as well as an ally. Nothing went unnoticed. He told her which waiters took too long with service and which dishes left the diners wanting more.
Night after night for almost two years they ended evenings together over a glass of wine. Gradually, it became clear that Stephen had indeed helped to sway the loan officer. It also became clear that he wanted more from Daphne than just a meal and a glass of wine. Daphne wasn’t sure at first, not certain if she was ready to share more with this man, with any man. But that deep whisky voice had a way of putting her at ease, of making it easier to say yes.
The first yes was the hardest, then he made it so much easier to say it again . . . and again and again and again.
Three
“Come on, Daphne. Let’s go. We’ll miss the ferry if you don’t hurry up,” Popi yelled as she piled the luggage back in the car for the short drive to the port.
“A ten a.m. ferryboat, too,” Daphne said as she reached the car. “How civilized! I can’t believe we don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn anymore to catch the kaiki.” She handed Popi the last piece of luggage and closed the trunk of the car.
It had been a yearly tradition to wake up at 6:00 a.m. (or, as the girls got older, to stay out all night in the discos) for the one-hour drive to the small northern Corfu town of Sidari, where passengers bound for Erikousa boarded the primitive and cramped kaiki for the sixty-minute trip to the island. There was no upgrade to first class on the kaiki, where everyone was squeezed in among the groceries, farming supplies, livestock, and yia-yias who’d lived on the water their entire lives but couldn’t set foot on a boat without getting seasick and throwing up in the bucket that was passed around for all to use. Daphne always believed it was the vile stench from that communal bucket that made the yia-yias sick, not the choppy seas.
“It still runs, just not as often. Now we have Big Al, the Alexandros ferryboat,” Popi said as she started the car for the ten-minute drive to the port. “It doesn’t run every day, but I’d rather wait for Big Al than pile on to that old kaiki with the chickens.”
“But what about Ari? Don’t tell me Ari is gone?!” Daphne cried. Ari was the infamous islander who tended goats on Erikousa and traveled to Corfu to sell his homemade cheese. As proficient as Ari was in haggling the best price for his feta, he was equally pathetic in his hunt for a wife. Ari’s lecherous stares and inappropriate comments were summer rites of passage for the girls. When he wasn’t milking goats, he was spying on them as they sunbathed or “accidentally” brushing up against them as he walked along the beach. He seemed harmless enough, or so they hoped. But there was always a sense of uncertainty, discomfort, and even a hint of danger whenever he came slithering by. It wasn’t until she reached her late teens that Daphne realized why she sometimes felt as if she were being watched as she swam alone in the cove. She spotted him there once, hiding behind a tree as she emerged from the water. He didn’t come nearer or speak to her, just stood and stared.
Daphne ran all the way home that day and made the mistake of telling Yia-yia about it. Daphne couldn’t believe her eyes as she watched the old woman move like she had been injected with youth serum. There were no signs of bunions, brittle bones, or arthritic joints as Yia-yia grabbed her gardening machete and literally ran down the hillside. She finally found Ari having a smoke and a frappe on the terrace of the only café in town. Yia-yia didn’t care that
the entire lunchtime crowd would hear what she had to say. In fact, she rather enjoyed the fact that she had many witnesses to her promise to cut off his manhood if he dared come near her granddaughter again.
Popi broke into her thoughts. “Don’t worry, Daphne, Ari is still around, and he is still looking for a wife. So you can visit him if you like. Maybe you’ll even change your mind and become Kyria Ari instead of Mrs. American Banker.” Popi slapped the steering wheel, amused by the thought of her elegant cousin shacking up in a one-room house and making a living milking goats.
“That’s certainly something to think about.” Daphne laughed as they pulled up to the port.
The ferry ride was simply glorious. Gone were the cramped conditions and crates from the days of the kaiki. Big Al was elegantly appointed, with rows of real seats, a working toilet, and even a snack bar belowdecks. They sat on the upper deck talking and taking in the scenery, both the natural and the human variety.
Evie was entranced by the dolphins that swam and jumped alongside the boat. She leaned on the railing, absorbed by their beautifully synchronized choreography as they leaped out of the water. Daphne couldn’t take her eyes off the kaleidoscope of sunlight and water that glistened on the walls of the caves and grottoes long ago etched into the colossal cliffs of Corfu by the persistent Ionian Sea. She held her breath as they passed the Canal d’Amour, where over thousands of years the sea had carved a tunnel through a towering rock. She strained her eyes to look into the canal, biting her lip as she saw the clusters of couples swimming there, remembering how Alex insisted that they swim the canal together so theirs would be an everlasting love, as the legend promised. Daphne wondered if the swimming lovers would one day learn, as she had, that the story was only an old wives’ tale, another empty island promise.
“Daphne, look.” Popi tugged at Daphne’s sleeve. She tilted her head to the left toward a young couple sitting on the far end of the deck. They were tanned, blond, and beautiful in that disheveled backpacker way. He was tall, with shoulder-length hair streaked by the sun and piercing blue eyes. She was even fairer, slim and stunning. He leaned against their backpacks, stroking her hair as she lay against his bare chest.
“Can you imagine being so young and so in love?” Popi whispered.
Daphne watched as the young man leaned down and kissed the girl’s forehead. Her eyes fluttered open, and she lifted his hand to her mouth and covered it with a blanket of soft kisses. He kissed her once more before standing up and going downstairs, leaving his beautiful partner to sun herself. Daphne didn’t say anything, but the longing, almost mournful look in her eyes made it quite clear that yes, she could imagine being so young and so in love. In fact, she could remember it quite clearly. But that, like so many other aspects of her life, was simply a memory from a lifetime long ago.
The trance was shattered when Popi jumped from her seat. “Oh. My. God. Daphne, look. Look who it is!”
Daphne followed Popi’s gaze to the stairwell and could not believe her eyes when she spotted Ari. It was as if time had stood still. He still wore a faded denim shirt unbuttoned to his navel, the same frayed cut-off jean shorts and plastic flip-flop sayonares, and his hair was still a mass of waves meticulously combed and gelled into a mullet. The only difference Daphne noticed was the generous sprinkling of gray that had invaded his once jet-black hair.
The cousins watched him as he stood at the top of the stairwell, a frappe in his hand and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He squinted against the bright sunshine and surveyed the deck before making his move.
Ari turned to his left and began to walk along the railing, intermittently puffing on his cigarette and sipping his drink. Daphne was amused to see that his infamous swagger, in which his hips seemed to roll while his feet shuffled, had also been unchanged by the years. The girls knew that his tour of the upper deck was more than just an aimless stroll. His small black eyes soon found their target in a long-legged German beauty who had no clue her quiet ride was about to be rocked by the legendary lothario.
“He hasn’t changed one bit, has he?” Daphne whispered.
Ari reached the spot where the young woman was lying, leaning against the backpacks with her eyes closed and face turned up toward the sun. There was plenty of room around her, but instead of stepping aside to avoid her golden brown legs, he stepped over them. As he lifted his leg over, he deliberately rubbed his foot against her thigh, his jagged toenails leaving a thin white scratch on her skin. He stumbled a bit to make it appear as if he had tripped and then tipped the frappe. The young girl shot upright.
“Signomi, signomi,” Ari muttered and bent down, using his dirty hands to wipe the liquid from the young girl’s legs. “Sorry. Desole. Traurig.” Ari went down his repertoire of languages, apologizing as the girl snatched her legs to her chest.
The boyfriend emerged from the snack bar below to find his love being molested before his eyes. He dropped the beers he was carrying and ran to confront the man who had dared to put his hands on her.
The lanky German towered above the soft and stocky Greek and surprised him with a violent shove.
“I am sorry. Accident. Accident,” Ari muttered in broken English as he jumped up.
The tourist pushed him until he was pinned against the ship’s railing. “Do not touch her!” he shouted. His English was as perfect as his aim: the first punch landed squarely in Ari’s bloated gut. It knocked the wind out of him, and Daphne and Popi gasped as they watched him jackknife forward. But the boyfriend was not finished. The next punch produced a sharp cracking sound as it connected with Ari’s jaw, snapping his head back as his body leaned back over the railing precariously.
“Bitte, Anschlag,” the girl pleaded with her boyfriend, terrified that his temper would land them in a Greek jail.
“He’s going to kill him,” Daphne cried as she attempted to shield Evie’s eyes from the carnage. Evie nuzzled into her mother’s chest and began to cry as the passengers continued to shout. But no one stepped forward.
By this point dozens had gathered round to watch the spectacle. Several of the men yelled for the German to stop but their cries did no good. Many of them had dreamed of doing the same thing to Ari at one time or another. Had Ari’s attacker been one of their own, they might not have protested so loudly.
But it all had no effect on the young man, who was set on making this dark stranger pay for dishonoring his girlfriend, although Ari was already bloodied and in pain.
“This is crazy!” Daphne shouted. Kissing the top of Evie’s head and putting her on Popi’s lap, she stood up and walked toward the chaos. The salty Greek air had gotten under her skin and rekindled the spitfire that had dulled with the years. Chin held high, Daphne marched up to the German.
“Stop it,” she demanded, “you’ll kill him.” She used all her strength to pull at his arms and stop him from throwing another punch, but it was no use.
“Stamata!” she yelled as she tugged at him again.
All eyes were on Daphne. The passengers stood silently, watching as she tried to pull the men apart. Finally, shamed by the fact that a woman dared to do what they had not, the men one by one began to step forward.
“That’s enough now.” A gray-haired man in a fisherman’s cap was the first to speak.
The German ignored the stranger and turned once more to Ari.
“I said enough,” the man growled. He stepped behind the German, wrapped his arms around the man in a bear hug, lifted him off the deck, and—although the young man flailed and kicked—calmly carried him to the other side of the deck and dropped him.
The German held his bloodied knuckles in the palm of his left hand. “He deserved it.”
“I know he did,” the Greek replied. He turned his back on the young tourist and walked back to where a disheveled Ari sat crumpled on the floor.
“Malaka,” the man spat at Ari.
Daphne made her way back to Evie and Popi. “Nice try, cousin,” Popi said as Daphne took her seat. “Di
d you really think you were going to stop that man?”
Daphne lifted her trembling arms and pulled Evie close, then buried her head in the girl’s lavender-scented hair. “Are you okay, honey? That was just a silly man behaving very badly. Don’t let it upset you, all right?” Daphne leaned in to speak to Popi. “I couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. Look at all those guys sitting over there. None of them did anything until I tried to.”
“Isn’t that the way it is, Daphne?” Popi said. “They think they are the braver, stronger sex, but we know the truth, don’t we?”
“Yes, yes, we do.” Daphne hugged Evie tighter and looked across the water. She could finally see the port of Erikousa getting closer.
Four
ERIKOUSA
SUMMER 1992
Daphne had been gone since morning, and she knew that now, as the sun began to set, Yia-yia was beginning to worry. She could picture her grandmother waiting at home on the flower-filled patio, pacing the outdoor kitchen back and forth under the shade of the lemon and olive trees. Mama had always told Daphne that since the Lord had chosen to bless them with only one child, it was Mama and Baba’s divine obligation to keep Daphne safe. Back home in New York, even at fourteen years old, Daphne was never let out of the sight of her overprotective parents, let alone allowed to disappear for an entire day. But this was different. This was Erikousa. This was the island paradise where Daphne could spend her summer exploring, swimming, and doing exactly as she wished, as long as she made it home in time to share a meal with Yia-yia.
“Yia-yia! Yia-yia!” Daphne shouted as she reached the bottom of the steps leading up to the patio where her grandmother waited.
Yia-yia stood on the lush patio, her petite body overwhelmed by the shapeless black dress that was her uniform, her salt-and-pepper braids obscured by the black headscarf knotted under her chin. She looked down and scanned the garden path. A wide smile crossed her wrinkled face as she spotted her granddaughter.
When the Cypress Whispers Page 3