David sat up again.
“How did your mother die?”
Emma froze. She decided she had misunderstood the question.
“What?”
“Your mother.” David spelled it out. “She died last year, right?”
Emma nodded.
“How?”
“It was an accident.”
She turned her head down and tried to concentrate on her toenails. There was another silence, but this one was charged with tension. Emma held her breath, feeling David’s eyes on her profile.
“Is it true she killed herself?”
Emma stared at him, speechless. David stared back with his big blue eyes widely set apart, waiting for an answer.
Emma’s hands were shaking; she shook her head vigorously.
“No,” she said. “She was in a car. It was an accident in a car.”
“Penny said she drove off a bridge,” he insisted.
“No, no,” Emma said in one breath.
“She said it was a suicide,” David pressed. Emma glared, and looked the other way. She felt her face turn red.
The idea that Penny might have had this conversation with her children and her husband at the kitchen table filled her with shame. When had the English boys learned about this? And why did David feel entitled to discuss this with her?
“It was an accident,” she repeated forcefully.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know—”
She searched for the word exactly but she couldn’t find it anywhere. She knew this sounded dumb and unbelievable, despite its being the truth. So she added:
“I don’t remember.”
There was another silence. David seemed perfectly comfortable, as if they were having just any conversation about their favorite music. He hurled a couple of pebbles in the water, attempting to make them skip and bounce on the surface. Emma fixed her gaze on the tiny shape of Monica across the water. Her silhouette was moving up and down the beach mechanically. She could be playing something—maybe she was running after a ball—or might she be panicking, desperately looking for help? Monica didn’t speak any English or any Greek and there was nobody around who could understand her if she was having a crisis. Emma felt that pang of guilt again, reminding her that she shouldn’t have left her little sister all alone. If last summer Monica had seemed lighter—happier even—despite the tragedy that had just happened, this year she seemed more frightened, as if something darker had begun to sink in and bury itself inside her. Maybe she feared that they too—Emma, Luca, their father—could abandon her and leave her stranded in the blue taverna, because that was just what happened once you grew up. People left you.
David threw another pebble and this time it bounced three times.
“My mother died too,” she thought she heard him saying.
Emma turned. This obviously couldn’t be right. What had he said? His accent was harder for her to understand than Jack’s.
“What?”
“I said that my mother also died.”
Emma shook her head, as if to say she was confused. Maybe she had misunderstood the entire conversation.
“I am adopted. Penny is not my real mother.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly.
“She died when I was two and my real father had disappeared before I was even born. I was taken into an orphanage and Penny and Peter adopted me a few months later.”
He paused. “But I don’t remember any of that because I was too small.”
Emma stared at him, stunned. Actually it made sense: he looked nothing like Penny or her husband. This whole story was so unexpected, it turned around the whole image she had had of the boys.
“And Jack? Is he …”
“No, Jack is their real son. He’s four years younger than me. I was there when he was born, but I don’t remember that either.”
There was a pause. Emma felt she had to say something positive.
“You were lucky. Penny and Peter are very nice people.”
It was a silly remark, but she didn’t know what else to say. She resented David’s confession. She didn’t want him to think they shared a common destiny. Because they didn’t.
A dark and unsettling feeling was beginning to creep in, like the first hint of nausea after eating a fish that didn’t smell right. It was the forewarning of something more dangerous. She kept her eyes on her little sister, who now seemed to be running back and forth, like a crazy marionette.
“I need to go back,” she said.
“Wait. We’ll go in a minute.”
And then without warning he was all over her. He grabbed her by the shoulders and sat on top of her on the flat rock, wrapping his storklike legs around hers. Emma felt the heat of his body, the pressure of his hips against hers, his foreign, bitter smell, enveloping her. His mouth pressed so hard on hers that her lips hurt against her teeth. This was so sudden and unexpected that she didn’t have time to react, though in that fraction of time Emma managed to observe how inconceivable it was that this should be the right way to kiss: she had never expected it would be so wet and messy. His tongue was trying to pry open her lips, and Emma understood she was supposed to let it in—which she did—though she had no clue as to what to do next. His tongue started swirling around hers and she tried to cooperate by imitating the movement, despite finding everything about the kiss uncomfortable and slightly disgusting. The idea was for their saliva to merge—why on earth would one want to do that, spittle not being anybody’s favorite thing? Something else was going on while she was busy moving her tongue in a circle, trying to escape David’s—a difficult task in such a contained space—and it was happening in the lower part of her body. He was pushing against her hips and she began to feel his hard-on. She thought again of the thin trail of fuzz against the whiter area of his skin that she had glimpsed earlier, how it disappeared under his swimsuit heading toward what she knew was the most secret part of a man’s body, a part she had never properly seen but only heard about. And there it was, swelling and pushing, clearly demanding something from her, which she had no idea how to reciprocate. Despite the discomfort and the terror to be treading on such uncharted territory, there was something Emma was enjoying in all this. It was difficult to tell what it was exactly: it was a warmth in her lower belly, an undistinguished longing, like a desire to open up, to allow him inside (but where? how?), mixed with the distant knowledge that this was the line that separated everything that she had been from what she was going to be from now on. That’s when she felt David’s hand fumbling inside her swimsuit, right between her legs. This was absolutely unheard of and was supposed to be terrifying. Half of her stiffened, the other half began to melt away.
There had been a little pain, some blood and an unknown slimy substance glued to her legs that had made her uncomfortable. They had not said anything specific once it was over, they had just looked at each other, surprised, unsure as to what had happened and should be said or done next.
“I really have to go now.” Emma had stood up, only then realizing how much her back hurt after lying on that rock with all that weight on top of her.
“Let’s stay another minute. We can walk to the top. It’s nice up there,” David offered.
Emma’s heart was still beating wildly; she had been a little scared throughout—she hadn’t been able to see much, just quick flashes of skin, and was still unsure of the mechanics of the act itself—but now that it was over and done with she felt somewhat excited and proud. She was anxious to get away from David, and back to the beach to her brother and sister.
“Another time. My sister is waiting for me.”
“Okay. See you later then,” David said, quietly disappointed. He had gone back to being the slightly shy adolescent he was. There was no trace left in him of that determination that had possessed him only minutes earlier. He sat back on the rock in the same position as before, chin on knees, looking out into space. He seemed used to being left behind.
As soon as she jumped in, the goo and the blood between her legs washed away. She fixed her gaze on the beach. At every stroke the blue tables and chairs of Iorgo’s taverna got closer and so did Monica, sitting at the head of the table where they had their meals, a small child all alone, waiting for her family to reappear and rescue her. Emma’s breathing was steady, her strokes synchronized. The fluidity she had been pursuing all summer just came to her. She found herself gliding through the water effortlessly, as if her body had always known how to do it. The fear she’d had of drinking water or drowning had vanished. Getting to shore as fast as she could was all.
The crisis occurred that same afternoon, with the same abruptness of the downpour that marks the end of the summer.
The father and Mirella came back from Epidaurus in the early afternoon, earlier than expected. Luca and Emma were playing a game of backgammon at the table under the bamboo roof while Monica watched them. They could tell something had gone wrong by the way the father slammed the car door. He didn’t even wait for Mirella to get out of the red Fiat but came straight to the table where the kids were playing, while she emerged from the passenger seat with her head slightly bent down and went straight up to her room without even saying hello to the children. He looked distraught and didn’t say anything about the amphitheater, the beauty of the road, anything. He pulled out a cigarette from his crumpled pack and wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. When at last he looked at them, and asked how everyone was and if they’d been okay while he was gone, Luca and Emma just nodded, keeping their eyes on the board, rolling their dice.
“Emma swam to the island and back with the English boy,” Monica said. She had been waiting all along for her retaliation to take place. The father turned abruptly to Emma, astonished.
“Did you?”
Emma feigned a smile; she wasn’t sure whether his question meant he was proud of her feat. She nodded. He slapped her. Hard. Then turned to Luca.
“And where were you?”
“I … I was …”
“He was with Nadia in Kastraki. They both left me here,” Monica said.
The father slammed his fist on the table and stood up.
“I’ve had enough of you two. I’m sick and tired of this!”
Emma covered her burning cheek with her hand. The father took Monica by the hand and left Emma and Luca without another word.
They looked at each other. Emma felt a terrible loneliness overcoming her all at once. She and Luca had been drifting more and more apart all summer to the point of becoming almost estranged. She understood something frightening was happening. Without their mother, there was no more center, no focus to hold them together. Pulled by an unknown centrifugal force, they were all breaking away from one another. Nadia, Mirella, the English boy, were only the beginning of their disintegration.
She opened her hand and moved it across the table. Luca took it.
Later that evening Mirella reappeared at the restaurant with the hesitant step of a convalescent. She looked around, sluggish and pale. Emma saw her approach in her peripheral vision, while she was letting Monica win at backgammon. The father was sitting next to them, immersed in his book. Peace and order had been silently restored. The girls exchanged a glance when the father reluctantly put his book away and stood up as if he had been summoned. Emma watched him and Mirella as they moved away along the beach into the blue light of dusk. She remembered being startled by the same image a year earlier, but now the scene had converted itself into a quieter, somber version of the previous summer. They were walking with caution, heads down, careful not to look at each other. Mirella seemed to be insisting on something the father would not agree with. They suddenly stopped and faced each other. The father made a couple of exasperated gestures, while Mirella, pleading and submissive, had the air of an obstinate victim. He took a step forward, leaving her behind. Mirella ran after him him and touched his arm. He shook her away. The father’s gesture seemed so harsh and yet so intimate that Emma had to pull her eyes away from the scene. It pained her to see how desperate a woman could become.
It was late when the father came back. He was in a black mood and didn’t make any effort at concealing it. He said he was sorry he had hit Emma earlier, though what she had done was dangerous and irresponsible. He said he needed her and Luca to look after Monica and he also needed them to help him with domestic tasks, as they were not children anymore. They were to be a team now. He articulated each word carefully, like someone rehearsing a speech. The way he was addressing them made them feel important, as if they’d been offered a promotion. He then said he felt it was time to head back home. He realized it was only mid-August and they were supposed to stay till the end of the month, but he was tired of the village. He didn’t bother to come up with an excuse, a lie about work or some pretense emergency.
“You should please pack tonight so we can leave early tomorrow.”
The children didn’t protest. They had been brought up to do what they were told. Mirella didn’t show up for dinner. They would never see her again.
Later that night Emma and Luca sat on the wooden floor of her room while Monica was fast asleep in her bed. Emma watched him open a tin box and pull out a cigarette. He lit it, blew out the smoke in one go and coughed.
“Since when do you smoke?”
“I do it only after dinner.”
She watched him inhale again. He was such a beginner and the gesture made him look silly, just the opposite of how he was hoping to look. She decided not to tease him.
“That English boy. David, the blond one. He said something,” Emma said. “Something crazy.”
“What?”
“Something about Mom.”
Luca tensed like a cat arching his back.
“Why was he even talking about her?”
“He said he’d heard a story.”
“From whom?”
“His … his mother. You can’t repeat it, though.”
Luca’s voice softened, like he knew what was coming.
“I won’t. Tell me.”
Emma knew that once she’d actually said the word, it would be between them for the rest of their lives. But there was no reason to keep it a secret anymore at this point. Everyone knew, they must. The aunts, the schoolteachers, the neighbors, even Penny and the English boys, Nadia and her large Greek family. And the father, of course. She knew Luca knew, just like she did. They’d just agreed never to say it out loud.
Emma glanced over to the bed where Monica was sleeping. She didn’t know yet, Emma was sure of that, but in a few years she too was going to find out. Luca noticed Emma’s fleeting look at their little sister. He gestured toward the door.
“We should have this conversation on the beach,” he whispered.
Outside it was pitch-black, save for a sliver of moon high in the sky. Nobody was around and the only sound was the gentle lapping of the water. They sat very close on the cool sand, their shoulders and arms touching. They did need air, space—they needed darkness, to be able to talk about what they’d been avoiding for so long.
“Yes, it’s much better out here.” Emma smiled at Luca, grateful that he was her brother, that he was there, close again.
It was early morning; only the birds broke the stillness, swooping underneath the bamboo roof in their search for leftover bread crumbs. Emma was sitting on top of her duffel bag outside the taverna’s door while inside the father was settling the bill with Iorgo. The chorus of the same sirtaki song that had played all summer echoed from a speaker inside the large empty room despite the early hour. From where she was sitting she could see a portion of the two men leaning over a table where Iorgo scribbled numbers in his hesitant handwriting. She knew this was the last time she was going to see the beach and the island and wasn’t quite sure what was required of her for an appropriate farewell. She felt languid and sentimental about
leaving and wondered about performing some kind of ritual of goodbye.
“Oh, you’re here.”
In his travel clothes, dark shades, faded blue Lacoste shirt and long trousers, the father looked particularly efficient. He patted his pocket for his cigarettes.
“I’m going to load the car and we’ll be ready to go in twenty minutes. Give me your bag, I’ll put it in the trunk.”
He seemed cheerful, now that his plan was being put into action. Emma stood up and let him take her duffel. She walked over to the water’s edge with her flip-flops on, letting her feet sink a few inches in the soft sand. The water curled at her ankles.
“Hallo Emma …”
David had come up behind her in his slack swimsuit, holding his flippers. He stared at her dress, puzzled.
“Where are you going?” He shielded his eyes from the brilliance of the early-morning sun.
“Home. We are leaving now.”
“Oh,” he said, and looked away toward the island. Emma fixed her gaze on his bare chest. It was unreal, what had happened between them. She absolutely refused to understand what could have moved her. To allow him. To do that. It was unthinkable now.
“I thought you were staying till the end of August,” he said, feigning indifference.
“My father wants to go home.”
She knew he had come for her, eager and full of hope. She saw his long stork legs, his bony shoulders, how they were beginning to droop just a little. It should have been Jack, not him.
“Will you write to me?”
The Other Language Page 4