When We Were Young

by Jaclyn Goldis

Bea dolloped yogurt into a ceramic bowl she’d made; she’d etched into the clay HEAR ME FUCKING ROAR. “Well, don’t feel pressure to have sex. There are other ways to enable each other to orgasm.”

  “Mom, seriously, stop! I’m leaving!”

  Joey clamped her hands over her ears and lifted her basket by her teeth, laughing a jittery laugh because the truth was that she didn’t really know how to get Leo to orgasm, or herself for that matter. Joey crossed the peach-tiled hall to grab Leo at his flat.

  He was in his kitchen, and he gave her one of those smiles she slipped in her pocket to use later, in the privacy of her bedroom with her eyes closed when her longing for him threatened to unmoor her. Leo didn’t know this of course. Unaware of the power his smile wielded, he returned to slathering peanut butter and Merenda onto bread. Merenda was the Nutella of Greece, a chocolate spread made of hazelnuts, but tastier.

  Joey sank onto a honey-colored wicker stool. Her friends at home all knew about her summertime crush. They each maintained rationales about why Joey and Leo hadn’t yet consummated their flirtation. Leo wanted to play the field. He wouldn’t make a move until he was sure he was ready for commitment because he wasn’t the type to jerk Joey around like that. That was one school of thought. On the other, it was Joey, if he wanted you, you’d know. Joey felt a hit of anger at the memory of her friend Dalia sitting on a purple beanbag chair in her basement and saying that so matter-of-factly before taking a long drag on a joint.

  While Leo rinsed his hands, Joey poked her head into the living room to say hi and bye to his mother, Maisy. His father, Rand, was out on the terrace. Joey could see his thick swoop of dark hair, white linen button-up, and tan slacks, and the backs of his Italian moccasins. Rand relished his alone time—always off on some solo sailing excursion, shouting at his brokers, or poring over investment tomes.

  Maisy was lying on the cozy yellow-and-white-striped couch with her hefty black laptop on her stomach. She’d grown her golden-brown hair long this summer, and it fanned out pin-straight on a white grass-cloth pillow. The computer screen was the homepage for Maisy’s Mary Kay sales thing. The two apartments sprouted an endless parade of Mary Kay lipsticks courtesy of Maisy, who was a rep. “There aren’t enough lips in these families for the lipsticks” was Rand’s favored commentary. He’d once confided to Joey that Maisy’s Mary Kay venture yielded only enough profit to fund her annual expenditure on greeting cards. (In her defense, Maisy always did send thoughtful greeting cards.)

  The TV blared a Charlotte freak-out from a Sex and the City DVD. “Have fun, kids.” Maisy waved.

  After they’d gone, Joey said, “Your mom wears a silk dress to watch TV.”

  Leo grinned. “My mom wears a silk dress to take out the trash.”

  They bounded down the stairwell and then out into the alleyway across which lines were strung with drying laundry that functioned doubly as address panes. The shopkeeper who owned Papagiorgis with the rainbow pillowcases. The old man who smoked cigars on his stoop with the light-blue undershirts.

  “Shit.” Leo froze mid-stride toward his bike. “I forgot the sandwiches.”

  “I’ll go.” Joey reached back for the doorknob. “Anyway, I wanna go to the bathroom.”

  “Okay, grab us some beers too? Let’s have fun today.”

  “Fun sounds…fun,” said Joey, but she hovered there awkwardly, not moving. She felt weird taking beers out of Leo’s parents’ fridge. Not like Rand and Maisy would care, but still.

  “Okay, I’ll come too,” said Leo, following the way her mind had devolved.

  Such an innocuous plan. If only she’d just agreed to go up herself and grab those damn beers.

  When they walked into the apartment, the shadows of Maisy and Rand bounced on the wall of the living room visible from the kitchen island.

  “It sickens me,” Joey heard Maisy say, “all those Polish women who would have had the ability to choose what took place in their own bodies. And now they’re saddled with motherhood, even if they don’t want it. You weren’t the one who had to make the choice, Rand. Leo wasn’t even a year old.”

  Itchy from the tension, Joey opened her mouth to make their presence known, but Leo put his finger to his lips. Joey stilled against the fridge.

  “I’m just saying, Mais,” said Rand, in that monotone way he had, never riled up, never affected by anything anyone said, positive or negative alike. “That doctor was an idiot. She wasn’t even set up for operations—”

  “Abortions, Rand. You can call them abortions.”

  They were talking about abortion? An awful premonition swept over Joey. She vaguely remembered something her mother had mentioned the other day. A female doctor had boated to Poland, where abortion was illegal, to set up a floating operation room for women to get abortions. Apparently something had gone awry, and the doctor hadn’t been allowed to proceed. Was that what they were talking about?

  “Fine, abortions. The fact is, it was all sensational. This woman—a gynecologist is she? Well, I’d call her a drama queen. What, are the Poles going to decide to legalize abortion because of her stunt?”

  Joey motioned her head to the sandwiches on the counter where Leo had left them. Through the Saran Wrap, she could see that Leo had sliced them on the diagonal. Leo shook his head and pressed a hand against the wall done in pale-yellow sponge paint.

  “You just don’t get it, Rand. What that doctor tried to do was courageous! I feel for those poor women she could have helped. Instead they’ll be saddled with motherhood against their will. Having that abortion seventeen years ago was the best thing that ever happened to me. I would have died—died with another child. We could barely make it with Leo. He was, what, nine months when we found out I was pregnant again? I never regretted that abortion, Rand. Let’s be honest, the two of us weren’t meant to have children. Women should have the right. Women should have the right!”

  Joey was going to be sick. She glimpsed Leo’s face; it was stone. For a few terrible moments, there was the sound of the clock tower down below. Three quick tocks. Joey wished for tocks forever.

  Finally, Rand spoke. “I don’t even know what we’re fighting about.”

  The sound of ice cubes clinking against glass. Glass meeting coaster.

  “I don’t either, to be honest.” Maisy laughed a normal laugh. Joey hated her for that laugh.

  “Okay, honey,” said Rand. “I’m going out on the boat.”

  Leo grabbed the sandwiches and slid out the front door. Joey followed him down. She had never known less in her life what to say. So Maisy had had an abortion after Leo. That was bad, but it wasn’t the worst. The worst was the cavalier way she and Rand had framed Leo’s entire life. Like having kids was a burden. Like Leo himself was a burden.

  “Are you sure you still want to go to Sidari?” Joey asked as Leo slung his leg over the motorbike.

  “Yeah.” He handed her a helmet and buckled his. She got on the back and clutched him around the waist.

  As Leo drove north past sea-battered cliffs, Joey finally said his name with a question mark at the end of it. It was chicken to force him to lead the way, but every other thing that occurred to her to say, to defend Maisy or Rand or explain their conversation away, was stupid, and she couldn’t advocate for any of it. But either Leo didn’t hear her speak or he pretended her appeal had been lost in the column of wind.

  They drove steeper into the mountains, the morning’s mist suspended over the bucolic countryside, the quiet punctured only by the tinkle of a goat’s bell and the cicadas orchestrating their chorus from orchards of fig trees. If he’d been his normal happy self, Leo would have recited trees. Olive. Myrtle. Strawberry. Kumquat. Judas. Holm oak. When Leo was stumped over a clump of green, Joey always found it endearing when he retrieved his botany book and surfaced sheepishly with, “Just cypresses.”

  The entire way to Sidari, Joey composed a single sentence. She would say, “They can’t have meant it.” She arrived at a follow-up too. “Your mom having a
n abortion had nothing to do with you.”

  But it did, didn’t it? Rand and Maisy weren’t kid people. And Leo was a kid. Theirs. So by implication, Rand and Maisy weren’t Leo people.

  How anyone couldn’t be a Leo person, Joey would never understand.

  He was so special. An image flashed—the day Joey first set eyes on Leo, when their families met in the stairwell of their common apartment building that first summer in Corfu.

  The Abrams threesome had been on the way in from the sea, the Winns off to some fancy dinner reservation. Leo wore a Red Wings T-shirt four sizes too big, while Rand and Maisy oozed rich, important vibes in formal clothes. Joey imagined the scene that had preceded this strange fashion array. Perhaps a bow tie thrust upon Leo that he’d obstinately refused, opting in protest for the most inappropriately casual and ill-fitting item in his closet.

  The four adults chatted—sussing out their American origins and status as neighbors in the rooftop apartments, marveling that both kids were age ten.

  “How did you all wind up in Corfu?” asked Maisy. “As Leo has reminded us often, it’s not the normal vacation spot for Americans.”

  “We were supposed to go to Mackinac Island,” said Leo, his sea-glass eyes blazing premature teen angst. “Their fudge is really good.”

  “I love fudge,” said Joey, to which Leo peeped out a smile.

  “My parents are from here,” said Bea. “I visited only once, but I fell totally in love. Corfu in the summer is…magic, and untouched by Americans.”

  “We think so too,” said Rand.

  Bea nodded. “I want Joey to feel the same. Corfu is part of her, and my husband’s never seen it either. And I’m an artist—inspiration strikes me most in new settings. The light is fantastic on the terrace, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, it’s out of this world,” said Maisy.

  Over the adults’ chitchat, Leo said, “Hey there, Joey. What do you like to do for fun?”

  She started. Her mind went fully blank. What in the world did she do for fun? “Art!” she said, remembering. “I really like art. Painting especially.”

  “So you’re like…an artist? That’s so cool. I suck at painting.”

  Joey smiled. “Yeah. I’m an artist.” Previously she’d only said it in a different way: I want to be an artist when I grow up. It felt good to take the future condition out of it, like Leo had. She was an artist now. “What do you want to be?”

  Leo shrugged. “Something with the stock market. Business. Boats. I like boats.”

  Rand said, “Time to go, son. We’re going to be late for dinner.”

  “Boats?” Think of something to say about boats, Joey. “Boats are really…wet and cool.”

  Wet and cool? She’d wanted to be cool for this boy, somehow, but she suspected she hadn’t achieved it.

  Leo started down the stairs after his parents, but then paused and turned back. He stared at Joey straight-on so that eventually his green eyes consumed everything else. “I made up a secret language this year. If you want, I can teach it to you.”

  “Really?” Joey’s heart soared. “Sure!”

  “Okay.” Leo nodded. “Gagoose then. That means see you later.”

  “Gagoose.” She smiled a little at him, and he smiled back, and she felt in their gaze that there had been some kind of test, followed by a mutual understanding that she’d passed.

  * * *

  Sidari, on Corfu’s rocky western coast, revealed itself in a sweep of endless beauty that felt wrong, twisted. Joey and Leo dismounted the bike in quiet and followed the blacktop trail to a secluded pocket of flat, sandy rock. The water glittered calm and green below.

  Leo said, “I’m gonna walk a little.” He struck off. Joey shed her cover-up, squinting at Leo through the glare of the sun. His back was to her, shoulders slumped. At some point, he moved farther, a speck against the Monet-idyllic watercolor of a day. If they were intimate already, if even they’d kissed, it might have been different. Joey might have known how to touch him. But she didn’t, so she sunned alone for a bit, her towel a too-thin barrier against the scorching rock.

  Finally, Joey climbed down to the sand, pausing to investigate a colony of clams. Then she waded into the sea, out to a shallow reef hosting clusters of spiky, purple sea urchins—but nothing could distract her from the sick feeling that Leo’s parents didn’t really want him. Sure, her own mother could be a trip, to put it lightly. But Bea wanted Joey, and she wanted Lily—and so did their father.

  Periodically, Joey started in the water, her eyes seeking reassurance that Leo was still out there somewhere. She’d thrash a bit and then latch onto him and calm. After she’d exhausted her capacity for swimming, she waded back to shore and sat for what seemed like an eternity on a rock, waiting. It was only when the sun went down though that Leo finally returned.

  “Ready?” His tone betrayed nothing.

  On their way home, they stopped for gelato by St. George’s Bay.

  “I’m sorry,” said Leo as they waited in line. He rubbed his eyes, the green of them not their usual lively but deadened, like a lawn that hadn’t been watered all summer.

  “For what?” said Joey. “Leo, they can’t have meant—”

  “J, I appreciate you trying, but it’s not such a shock. My parents aren’t terrible people, but they suck as parents. What really got me though is that I could have had a sibling. You can’t imagine how cold it is all alone with Rand and Maisy.”

  “You have me though. Leo, you—”

  “Not in Michigan, I don’t. I only have you guys in the summer.”

  The ice cream scooper girl handed them their cones. Joey tried to think of some way to flip it. To make it okay for him. “But you can’t—”

  “Stompoo,” said Leo in a flat, calm voice. Joey looked into his eyes, and he didn’t move them away from her. They hadn’t talked like this since they were kids, having come to some unspoken agreement to abandon their secret language as they ascended into their teenage years.

  Joey felt the fight deflate from her. “Ikodiko,” she replied.

  They walked outside, licking their cones on the sidewalk as night dropped its curtain. Leo got gas for the bike, and impulsively, Joey bought a fedora at a tourist shop next door. It was gorgeous, tan with a pale-blue ribbon.

  “Move over, Indiana Jones, here comes Joey Jones,” said Leo, legs straddling the bike, working on his cone. It was so nice to see his smile, like a spark plug to his eyes.

  “It’s cute, yeah?” She swiveled her head, modeling.

  “It is. Only because you’re wearing it, Jonesey.”

  Leo leaned in to touch her hat, but in the process, some of his strawberry gelato plopped onto the lid of her fedora. Joey’s mouth opened to yell, but before the words tripped out of her, Leo licked the ice cream right up.

  “My brand-new hat! You licked my brand-new hat!”

  A fit of giggles overtook her, and then Leo joined in. At first his laughs were tentative, but soon they stacked atop each other like building blocks.

  Joey examined the hat. The webbing was pristine—not a trace of ice cream residue.

  “Good as new.”

  “Leo!”

  “Just saying.” He looked at her, and even in the dark she could sense something headier, but she swallowed it down. She couldn’t handle the roller coaster of hope anymore.

  “Magical saliva,” she finally relented. “We should bottle it. The slogan will be…for even the toughest gelato!”

  “Jonesey.”

  Joey still hadn’t gotten it. “See, this is why you should eat your cone faster. I literally don’t understand how you take so long to finish—”

  But all of a sudden, Leo was kissing the words quiet, was kissing her, his lips on hers, full-body tingle, this was crazy, this was falling. This was falling down a chute inside herself.

  Was it his parents’ conversation, was it the fedora? Or was it simply meant to be? Later she would think it was sadly poetic. That their beginning fore
told their end.

  Chapter Eight

  Joey

  Corfu

  One Year Later, 2004

  At last another summer had arrived. The families had reunited on Corfu, with preparations under way for their annual First Night Dinner.

  Until landing in Corfu late the night before, Joey hadn’t seen Leo for over two months, not since she’d visited him at U of M over her spring break from Penn, their breaks luckily coinciding. After the prior summer, it had been torturous to separate for college, to see each other only for occasional spurts. But anticipation of the summer had kept Joey going. She’d spent many hours in her dorm room’s tiny, dark closet so as not to bother her roommates, winding the telephone cord around her finger, talking and listening to Leo but not getting to feel him.

  Now that was done. Last night, she’d leaped into Leo’s arms, soaked up his sunshine smell, and felt herself relax into the eternity of summer, where moments no longer had looming expiration dates. The fall semester felt eons way, with three months stretching out ahead in her favorite place on earth. Joey felt the happy and kind and generous that seemed to come naturally when your entire being was one giant exclamation mark.

  Her gaze skittered across the terrace, at all her favorite people. In the corner, by the door that opened into her family’s apartment, Rand and her father, Scott, were playing Lily’s favorite game, Tossing Lily and Sinead.

  Sinead was Lily’s imaginary best friend, and Lily didn’t find it fair that she would be tossed and not Sinead. So what happened is that Scott gathered Lily, limbs like an octopus, and essentially passed her to Rand, who stood a foot away on the terrace.

  Rand’s eyes lingered on the stock ticker floating across the screen he’d rigged so he was never far from his markets. Then he set Lily down and said in a cartoon voice, “Now it’s Sinead’s turn, Lily Pad.” He gathered an imaginary Sinead, hands quaking. “I think Sinead’s going through a growth spurt.”

  “No, silly,” said Lily, licking a Kinder Egg. “Sinead’s littler than me.”