“I think he’s pleased,” said Uncle William.
Yes. I was a buyer of sweaters. It was the only proper thing to do.
I wondered how to communicate this to Nikos, who had been watching me as I pondered this. He kicked a rock and it went bouncing into a ravine, loosing some pebbles and sand. At the foot of the ravine, a donkey was grazing, accompanied by a few chickens. Suddenly offended, the donkey began honk-wheezing, louder and louder until, apparently pacified, it became silent again.
“If Olivia weren’t ill,” I said, “I probably would marry her. I can’t be with Olivia without imagining a future for us. It’s not fair to her.”
“You are being generous?” he tried.
“God, does it sound that pathetic?”
“It sounds like …there’s a good English word for it that means making excuses.”
The word he was searching for was justification, but I didn’t feel like having it pointed at me right then and I kept it to myself. Another word he might have thought of was desperation. Another word was confusion. And I was self-pitying and lost and, in addition to all these things, hung over. Again.
“I need Olivia,” I said. “What else am I doing?”
“You are running away,” said Nikos. “But even if you marry Olivia, Hester will still be there. Making your life crazy now isn’t going to fix what has already happened.”
It occurred to me to thank Nikos because he’d made sense of something that I had been unable to see clearly. But I didn’t. He hadn’t changed my mind. The wrongness or rightness of it—of anything—seemed irrelevant.
All day I managed to avoid thinking about Hester. This had been an exhausting endeavor, and by the end of it, as I showered off the dust and sweat, I was eager to put her on the boat and be done with it. But I wasn’t ready to face her. Not really. When I appeared at the café for the changing of the guard—Nathan, sipping the last of a martini, ready to relinquish his chair—I could see she had gained hope for us. And now that I had relented once, that hope would be very hard to extinguish. I steeled myself and went forward.
Nathan and Hester made their goodbyes, complete with obligatory nattering about dinner back in New York. I sat down, waiting for it all to be over. I was sulking like a child, behavior I saved for Hester, I suppose, in the same way that Amanda did her sex-kitten cooing for Jack. Nathan finally gone, Hester turned her attention to me. I think she’d hoped for some tenderness, but she saw this particular slouch of mine as a sign that this was not the case. She sat down.
“I was hoping you’d come see me yesterday,” she said.
I looked away. “I know,” I said.
Hester looked down at the table and said in a small voice, “Well, that’s that.”
I felt bad for her then and hated myself. Maybe hate’s a strong word. I hated Hester then. “What did you expect?” I said. “Why did you come here?”
Hester was thinking, wasting different possibilities. She looked up after a while. “Because, Rupert, you’re all I have left.” She looked off to the left as if that would let her escape everything—me, the restaurant, her life—but she had a few things to say and, with a ferry arriving in another half hour, this was the safest time to do it. “I thought I needed to know where you were that day.” She shook her head, dissatisfied with her explanations. “And now I know.”
“But that was never the question,” I said. I was beginning to feel reckless. “The question is Where were you?”
Hester looked up. She knew she was in danger.
“Because that’s the real question, isn’t it? Where were you? Because you were on the boat, not me, and you should have been watching him. And you were there. You were. You were there, and you let him drown.”
I put some money down on the table, although I didn’t remember taking out my wallet, and left quickly. I wanted to get away as fast as possible because I couldn’t stand the smell of it. I didn’t want to be near such a ruined person. I also knew that I had destroyed any hope that Hester ever had of healing at that point. I’d learned over the last few days that her life would not mean much without me—without a few years to let her grow out of pain—but now I had killed any possibility of happiness. Any happiness. I might as well have killed her.
I walked up the hill through the village, taking the steps two at a time, until it was behind me and there was nothing but dirt and rocks and plants. I sat on the ground. I couldn’t see Hester, but I knew what restaurant she was in, under which roof. I could hear a small voice speaking somewhere inside, saying that I still had time to go to her. The damage was done, but maybe there was a kind word to be said. And for a minute I saw Michael in my mind in a red sweater, and he wasn’t just a reconstruction of shattered pieces of memory. He wasn’t an amalgam but looked just as he had when he was in front of me. I could see his expectant half smile, although he knew he could get anything, because Michael was spoiled. And I was lying on the couch with a novel and he was playing with his trains loudly. Hester is at the door saying, “It’s eleven. Nanny wants to go to bed.” And I say, “Let her go to sleep. I can brush his teeth and put on his pajamas.” And Hester relents and gives me a long-suffering look, although she’s happy I’m willing to do this for our little son. She takes the whiskey tumbler from the side table and judges it. I say, “Looks like I need some ice.” And she gets it for me. Michael, who has tired of the trains, is now supposed to be making a puzzle, but it’s too difficult, so he throws the pieces at the big flowerpot, which is more fun.
And then there is Hester, walking along the quay, carrying her own suitcase, the suitcase I should be carrying for her. But I can’t do it. I can’t move. It’s like Delphi and someone might need me, but I can’t imagine making a difference to anyone. I am only a bird or a ghost or a tree. I cannot move. I can only observe. I am not living.
10
p
The ferry arrived and there was the usual bustle. Someone was reversing in a small pickup truck, either trying to get on the ferry or kill the elderly woman who refused to move. Cameras were out and pointing. People were hugging. I saw Hester waiting on the pier. Even if she had been wearing other clothes, I would have recognized her stiff spine, her thrown-back shoulders. Goodbye. Goodbye, I thought, but a part of me was sad because she was taking some of my old life with her, something I would not get back. I watched her climb down into the boat, out of sight. Then I saw Clive and, after him, Nikos. I wondered what they were doing at the ferry.
There were a few sheep, causing problems, and a donkey. The donkey, not in the mood for seafaring, was pulling anxiously at its rope. At the rope’s other end, a man was struggling, and then the donkey—defiant swing of the head, monster teeth gleaming—escaped. I watched its mad dash, the men waving their arms; the women, mouths all Os of shock and wonder—then it reached the edge of the land. I saw the donkey’s lowered head, the moment of indecision, then decision, and it jumped off the pier. For a timeless second the donkey was flying; then it hit the water with a tremendous splash. I held my breath, worried that it had broken its legs. But the donkey resurfaced, swimming, and then—as if dropped from the heavens—was wading through the children on the beach, and they were hugging it and slapping its sides, and a little girl ran over with a sprig of jasmine and tucked it into the bridle. And another little girl ran down from the restaurant and gave it something to eat—maybe a carrot? a cake?—and the donkey liked it.
I felt happy then—an awkward joy—and realized that the gravel was poking through the seat of my pants. I walked down the hill, back into town. Nikos and Clive were by the newsstand, and Clive was reading the paper. I could see by the way Nikos lowered his glasses and then put them back that he had been looking for me.
“Rupert,” called Nikos, “did you see the donkey?”
“Yes, yes. Quite a jump.”
Clive looked me up and down. “You look terrible. Are you hung over?”
“No,” I said. “I’m hung under.”
“What does thi
s mean?” asked Nikos.
Clive wondered. “It means either he has a large penis or he wants a drink.”
I smiled. “I’ll take the drink.”
Clive and Nikos were actually at the port to see off Amanda, who, in response to the latest phone call from Jack, had decided to leave immediately. She’d packed in a hurry and only just made the ferry. Nikos, although he’d been insisting that she go to Hydra for the last two weeks, had suddenly felt compelled to try and convince her to stay.
“She didn’t say why?” I asked.
Nikos shook his head. “There was something wrong.”
“No one knows much about Amanda.” I waited for Nikos to disagree, but he didn’t.
“She’s up to something,” said Clive.
I spent the next few days dividing my time between the site and Olivia’s side, which seemed the safest places to be. Although Amanda had not been a regular drinking companion, her absence somehow disturbed the balance, and I found myself going to bed at the reasonable hour of 2 A.M. and often waking because I was done with sleeping. I hadn’t asked Olivia to marry me, because it seemed ridiculous—I seemed ridiculous—in Hester’s wake.
The site had not yielded anything exceptional, or even whole, and the little chips and shards of dirty pottery were no longer that compelling. The promise of a great find had dimmed. When Nikos and I referred to the “site” it now included the café across the valley, where we could supervise, although the workers at this distance were as small as ants. Nikos thought the whole thing was under control. He had decided that Tomas was a good supervisor and, to keep him in line, had dangled the prospect of a job in Athens and maybe even New York as incentive to find something. I agreed that this was the best way of having the dig yield something real.
Nikos was going to have to return to Athens to see Kostas, who probably just missed him but had sent a number of messages citing all Nikos’s neglected duties, his spending too much money, his mother, his fiancée, all wondering what he was up to. He decided to go home for a week but kept not leaving, until one Thursday he packed a small bag and sneaked off without saying goodbye to anyone. Nathan and Clive were returning to New York in another ten days, and although it had seemed that the summer would go on forever, what was left was passing too fast. We made jokes about all getting a house together, a commune of sybarites, or meeting up again next year. No one believed it, though. And it covered up a sadness—an anticipation of nostalgia—made all the stronger by a few things: the ghost of angry Jack hovering over Amanda, Nathan’s recent post-office phone calls to his lover in New York, Olivia’s declining health.
Nikos was in Athens when Amanda returned. The rest of us were in the garden with the Victrola cranked and coughing up a Viennese waltz, and Olivia was killing me at backgammon. Neftali had Clive helping her with some potted geraniums that needed to be moved. Nathan was writing postcards, the sure sign of someone about to return home. There wasn’t much light in the garden, and when the gate creaked open I couldn’t make out who was standing there.
Then I heard Amanda’s voice—“Don’t make a fuss”—and before I could decide what she was talking about, she stepped into the light shining off the front of the house, and we saw what a mess Jack had made of her face.
Nathan stood up, and all his postcards slid to the ground. I didn’t move, because I didn’t know what to do other than make a fuss. Neftali was holding her breath, but Olivia got up right away. She ran over to her and put her arms around Amanda and walked her up the stairs of the house. She paused at the door and said, “Rupert, please bring in Amanda’s bag,” and then they disappeared inside.
Later that night I heard Amanda sobbing in the room across the hall, but it sounded almost staged to me. I could never be generous to Amanda. Too much of this, again, seemed within her capacity to control.
The next morning I had to walk into town to get another notebook. I’d filled mine with little sketches of the larger shards and guesses as to their provenance. I’d been looking forward to the walk, but after rounding the first corner I saw that I was behind Amanda. I could have waited to let her get ahead, but, as if sensing me, she turned. Her face was blue on one side and she had a cut above her left eyebrow. It looked as if she’d been in a barroom brawl. When I got closer—she was waiting for me—I saw that her lip had also been cut but was almost healed.
“Cigarette?” I offered.
She took it.
“Did Jack do that to you?”
“God, Rupert, how do you do it?”
“What?”
“You just asked me about Jack in the same tone of voice that you offered me a cigarette.”
I thought, “Years of practiced patrician denial.”
“You really think you’ve got my number, don’t you?” said Amanda.
I regarded her. She looked more angry than wounded, more aggressive than needy. “If you want to be alone,” I said, “I understand.” I began to walk ahead.
Amanda watched my back for a minute, then said, “Yes.”
I turned around.
She began to shake her head in an appealingly self-deprecating way, a predictable way. “Yes, Jack did this to me.”
I waited for Amanda to catch up.
“He was drunk when I spoke to him on the phone, not darling-I-miss-you drunk, more why-do-I-even-bother? drunk. But when I got to Hydra, he was so deep into it that, I don’t know, he didn’t even recognize me.”
“He’s got a problem,” I said, “and it sounds like you have some decisions to make.”
“His problem is my problem,” said Amanda. “He’s my husband and I love him.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that,” I said. I tried to make it sound clipped and proper, but Amanda saw the sarcasm.
“I won’t argue with you,” she said. “I know you don’t like Jack.”
“And right now,” I held her chin, which was level with mine, “you’re not in a very good position to defend him.”
Amanda seemed inclined to be honest with me, but I didn’t want to look into the depths of her relationship with Jack. Everyone hated Jack. Everyone said he was pompous, a poseur, and that the tiresome tough-guy routine, complete with macho dialogue, was contrived and offensive, but they always added the disclaimer, “He’s a great artist.” Clive and I, however, had decided that even his art was crap. This was a deep-felt conviction, although neither of us had ever seen any of his sculptures. And the fact that he was a wife-beater didn’t surprise me at all. Clive had called him that one night—“wife beater!”—as Jack stumbled his way to a restaurant bathroom, but this was just Clive’s sense of humor, not based on anything. Then again, no one was surprised that Jack had hit Amanda, and no one was surprised that she’d shown up again on Aspros. Amanda considered us family—we were safe—but I thought it was something more. I thought she needed people to witness her pulpy face as a sort of vanity. A true drama queen needs everything noticed, cooed over, regardless of the pathetic light she is thrown into.
That night Amanda, Clive, and I stayed in town after dinner for a few drinks. Olivia needed her space and didn’t want me walking around the house, pretending not to be bored.
“I need a night of sitting on the couch reading one of Neftali’s lurid books,” she said. “Go on then.” She waved me off. “Go make some mischief.”
We went to the small fancy bar that served cocktails and ordered martinis. Actually, we ordered glasses of vodka, and then asked for them to bring a bottle of “martini” out so we could add a little. We’d learned the local martini was a glass of vermouth with an olive, but sometimes a caper, floating in it. We also dropped ice into it. I took a certain amount of pride in this, my very bad martini, as all those girls I’d known growing up had taken pride in their very good martinis. I thought that Amanda was drinking rather fast, but then I’d finished my drink before she had. Clive ordered another round and we made our drinks.
“I miss Nikos,” said Clive.
“He’ll be back soo
n,” I said.
“But I might be gone,” said Clive, “and he didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I’ll give you his number in Athens,” I said. I looked over at Amanda. “Do you miss Nikos?”
Amanda smiled. “What’s it to you?”
I looked over at Clive, then back at Amanda, raising my eyebrows.
“You’re very fond of him, aren’t you, Rupert?” said Amanda. “A little too fond. And jealous of me?”
“What are you suggesting?” said Clive. He feigned shock.
I was amused. “I know what this is about, Amanda,” I said, because I did. There had to be something wrong with me because I had never pursued her, hadn’t even flirted passively, which I did with nearly all women.
“What is it about?” asked Clive, but Amanda and I just kept looking at each other.
Two martinis later, Tomas walked by with a few of his friends. He was clutching a paper bag with a bottle in it. After a quick exchange, Clive decided to join him. At this point, Amanda and I should have gone home, but we were talking about people from college, and we, predictably, had a few people we knew in common. One of them was Kiplinger Sand. I didn’t know much about Kiplinger other than he was now in the movies, wore offensive jackets, and drank toxic South American liquors that he bought at Irish bars in Chelsea, but I found the conversation pleasantly shallow and thought, I suppose, that I should stay for another drink.
“A friend of mine went out with him a couple of times,” Amanda said.
“Just a couple of times?”
“Well,” said Amanda, “they had an encounter in the back of his car.”
“You can’t stop there,” I said. “Amanda, subtlety is completely lost on me.”
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