by Jessica Bell
When did I start thinking nice gestures must be spiked with impure intentions?
“Happy birthday,” I whisper as if a ‘sweet nothing’ and nibble his earlobe. The bed linen crumples. A spring pings: a faerie soul puncture stifled in cotton wool. If Tessa had the vocabulary, that’s what she’d say the noise is.
With a groan, Alex stretches his arms; his walnut shell elbows blending in with his pale bed-sheet wrinkled skin. “Mmm, thanks, babe. I’m forty fucking years old.” He kisses my cheek—lips so coarse they could sand away the cracks in the ceiling. He should drink more water. He should look after himself better.
“So? You don’t look a day over thirty-five … and once you wake up a little and the pillow imprints have disappeared from the side of your face, you’ll probably look thirty-two,” I say with a wink, thinking he looks more like forty-five.
It was only a year ago that I thought he could still pass as thirty. How did he age so quickly? Is life beginning to burden him? Am I? Am I now the extra pinch of salt that causes the heart attack?
And what happened to the wife who would give him a foot massage first thing on a Sunday morning before offering to cook him French toast? Or the wife who used to wake up singing the song she’d just written the day before? The woman who would gladly forfeit music time for quality Alex time, because she … because I … knew how to keep a balance?
Who am I now?
I’m no silicone spatula, that’s for sure. I’m the wooden spoon with the snapped handle.
“Ha-ha. Thanks.” He yawns, opening his mouth as wide as a cookie cutter; his breath like off milk—the smog of bodily fluids.
For the last five years I’ve been speaking like a ventriloquist in the mornings until I brush my teeth in fear that mine might smell the same. Our breaths never smelled bad before we got married. What’s with that? There must have been something in the ceremonial wine. An eternal curse of discomfort. Once married, always harried. It should have been in our vows. Warnings are always better than surprises.
“So, seriously now, you’re bringing Alana Miles?” I twist my hair into a bun and lean my head against the wall to momentarily secure it.
Alex nods, his stubble brushing against the duvet below his chin. The sound of tires passing over a wet patch of road.
“Isn’t she like, fifty, now?” I ask, screwing up my nose, wondering why I would even consider it an issue. It’s not an issue. At all. What’s with you?
Alex laughs through his nose, rubbing behind his ear. Looks as if he’s been bitten. Do dust mites bite? I envision dust mites burrowing under my skin; a giant cockroach dropping me into a greenhouse swarming with flying ants. I squeeze my eyes shut to shake the thought.
“So when are you bringing her?”
“Gig’s not definite yet, we’re negotiating a fee.”
“So when are you thinking, then?”
“In about three months.” Alex sits up and scratches a dry flake of skin from his cheek. “You can get your shit together by then, right?”
“Of course!” Better start practicing.
Alex’s cell phone rings. He looks at the caller ID, swallows and flares his nostrils.
“Sorry. Have to get this.” He jumps out of bed, ties his robe around his firm yet slightly protruding stomach, letting it ring and ring.
It stops.
Offering a tight-lipped smile in apology, he puts an ear bud into his left ear, presses a couple of keys, and walks out onto the balcony.
Ten seconds later he returns.
“That was a quick conversation. Mustn’t have been too important.” I sit up in bed, pulling the duvet up far enough to cover my breasts.
“Um, no. It was just my accountant. Problem with some invoices. Want some coffee?”
I nod, force a smile of gratitude to tame resurfacing suspicion. I watch him walk out of the bedroom with his cell phone clenched in his hand.
Ever since Tessa and I visited my parents on the island last weekend, and Alex stayed home, suspicion has been beleaguering me on and off like the transitory sting of an injection. In fact, last weekend was the catalyst of many things—including my current emotional state.
The catalyst of cataclysm?
When I was about six years old, arriving to the island was like stepping foot into an enchanted pop-up fairytale book. At dawn, especially, it was a Neverland of lush luminescent green mountain, deep purple sea, sherbet orange sky and sharp-toothed cliffs so high you could literally walk on clouds—a much needed change from falling asleep on a vibrating carpeted floor that reeked of old amplifier wheel grease and waking up to cigarette smoke wafting through ducted heating vents.
The island’s windy mountainous roads are framed with olive groves and air so crisp you could snap it like celery. The houses are stained with whitewash and embedded with old-style wooden shutters, tailored by the locals to keep the summer swelter out. They are painted blue, red, or green, but occasionally you may come across the odd pink or orange shutters, which are more often than not inhabited by the eccentric barmy type who are color-blind, or the young and loaded foreigner who believes an island revolution should be in order.
Goats meander about the streets, butting each other’s heads senselessly as they try to escape oncoming cars and motorcycles. The roosters, chickens, and geese fire up the locals at the first sign of sunrise. Birds chirp, cicadas “jijiga” in the olive trees, and dogs bark as the bread truck, a red beat-up Ute, delivers fresh hot loaves to each residence and slips the required amount of bread into handmade cloth bags hanging from wire fencing.
Summer on this island engraves your skin with a longing to spend sunrise to sunset lying on a small, empty, white-pebbled beach in a secluded cove at the end of a private dirt walking track. At midday, it gets so hot you need to wade through heat waves rising from the unevenly tarred road like kindred spirits before you can wade in the Ionian to cool off—a flat, motionless oil bath which glows with an infinite turquoise glint. It may seem you are stepping into velvet, however, you emerge covered in a thin salty crust you can brush off like sand when it dries.
Most folks have a siesta between two and five in the afternoon, so there isn’t much to do except wander the streets and explore. By about six the sun still reads midday, and the waterfront cafés fill with shouting teenagers drinking frappé. They stay until it’s time to return home, quickly scarf down some homemade mousaka, and get dressed to party until seven the next morning.
By about ten at night the sun hides behind a mountain of shrubby arid terrain, and the cool edge to the air is relieving. At the mountain’s topmost peak, a silhouette of an Orthodox church can be seen, accompanied by a soundtrack of owls and crickets. At this time of day mosquitoes congregate for their evening feasts. Shepherds’ voices echo through the valley while their goats’ bells jingle as they steer along the hot dusty trails home.
In the morning, when glittering sunlight made patterns on my wall through the thin slats of my bedroom shutters, my mother would make me Vegemite toast. I’d eat on the verandah, without a plate, propped up on a whitewashed ledge full of tacky red plastic buckets, where my Yiayia would hand-wash our laundry. Dad would play guitar in the garden, and Mum would sing along as if she were the happiest person alive. Papou would tend to his veggie patch, and as soon as I’d finish my toast, I’d probe the olive trees for camouflaged cicadas.
At night I would ask Papou to play cards with me on the wobbly kitchen table covered in clay-brown, checkered laminate which matched the wrinkly brown-orange lino floor. We’d sit by the wood-fire oven to use it as a side-table for our flat orangeades.
The flicking neon light of the mosquito zapper would accentuate Yiayia’s oily fingerprints all over the once-white cupboards and plastic yellow-stained handles. The sink, which was used as a place to hold the bucket of water collected from the well to do the dishes, stunk like stale grease. Yiayia would use the same water several times before transferring the bucket to the outhouse to flush the toilet. As a result,
all cutlery and glassware had a slight fatty glaze to them and would sustain the exact pattern of one’s fingerprint.
Papou would show me his clever shuffling tricks with his sun-spotted trembling hands—one of which had a thumb missing—and I would smile and nod at his mumbling despite hardly ever understanding what he said. My father later said he often told stories about the earthquake that initiated the mass migration to Melbourne in 1953.
However, I do recall one instant when I’d understood. It was one afternoon before going for siesta that Papou and I sat together in the lounge room for a while. I was flipping through old photo albums as he picked up the newspaper and sat in his faded maroon armchair facing the window. I glanced up for a second to see him looking from side to side and then patting his shirt pockets.
“They’re on your head,” I said.
His eyes lit up as he removed his reading glasses from his balding and scratched head (from consistently knocking it against the wine cellar entrance), put them on his nose, and said as if he had been touched by an angel, “How you know? How you know what I look for? My God, my God, you have gift!”
At six years old, of course, I believed him, until my mother explained I had just used common sense. At least she’d made me feel intelligent instead of crushing the novelty of possibly being psychic.
In the evenings, Yiayia would fix herself a plate of bread, feta cheese, tomato, olive oil, and oregano. She would eat it with her fingers without having much control over the oil dripping down her chin and wrists—then she’d pinch my cheeks.
“Ella tho Melody, ella na fas some bread tzeez ’n’ domata, is goud for yoo, ya knah! No kreas today, eenai poli tough today ya knah,” Yiayia would squeal in her high-pitched half Greek–half Australian accent.
She’d fumble around the kitchen with a ripped straw hat, that was maybe as old as I was at the time, greasy ’eighties-style sunglasses (even at night), a faded floral dress, and an overused apron for pre-cooking the following day’s meals. When the food was ready to “look a’er itself,” she would sit out on the rear balcony in the moonlight, drinking “mountain tea” and dipping in teddy bear biscuits she’d had sent over from Australia.
Yiayia was eccentric to say the least. I’ll never forget the day my father returned from spear-fishing one morning and had brought home a massive live sea creature as big as his head, thinking it was just an empty shell.
We all gathered on the verandah to take a closer look at the twenty-centimeter thick monster that slowly emerged from its shell like a slimy skinless muscular arm. It was bright red with purple veins and a slippery transparent membrane. But Yiayia suspected it was a local delicacy and promptly prepared it for the grill. She put it in the washing machine. To tenderize. The whole house stank of dead fish for weeks, and thank God the washing machine was never used for its intended purpose. Most of the time it just sat, unplugged, by the toilet as an “asset.”
The shell still sits on Mum’s mantelpiece—as rare and precious as ammolite. Although multicolored on the outside—brown, yellow, green, blue, and red—the inside is lined with what looks like jet black glass. Any local that visits and sees the shell asks about it in astonishment and with great interest. It turns out the creature was deadly. If its poison hadn’t been sucked out during its two-hour cycle in the washing machine, Papou and Yiayia would have been poisoned to death!
The first thing you see as you walk through my parents’ front door, except for the magnificent shell, is my mother’s grand piano.
It shines like a freshly glazed tart. And whispers haunting melodies to me as if it were once a living soul; the mother of musically-triggered melancholy.
Last weekend, the resonance of my entering sandaled feet had hardly bounced off the walls when Mum said, “Why don’t you sit down and see if you can remember to play it?” Her eyes blazed with a need to swank her own musical skills and show me up. I tamed an irrational urge to scratch its glossy dark chocolate body with my wedding ring by shaking my dusty cardigan too close to the keys instead. Mum whipped out a duster from inside the piano stool and brushed it away—seething clenched teeth hidden by a civil smile.
My father, James, took our bags and challenged Tessa to a race in the nearby field of goats. Their bells jingled like windchimes weighed down with anchors in muddy water. One second the house was full of shrieks of joy and the next Tessa disappeared behind a slammed front door.
“Don’t slam the door!” Mum banged on the window, creating an echo highlighted by an abundance of country air. Dad, immersed in oblivious child-imitation giggles, ran after Tessa, shriveling up his body as if trying to shrink to her size.
“Well?” Mum nudged me toward the stool and tapped her left foot. The sound wavered between an annoying dripping tap and approaching suspenseful footsteps.
“Um …” My voice dithered like vocal heat waves, reluctant to make a fool of myself. “Maybe a bit later? Have you got any warm water? I feel really dehydrated.” I nursed my head and limped to the couch, legs heavy with unbalanced fatigue.
You can’t drink the water on the island, so everybody stocks up on plastic bottled ‘consumerist crap’ (in my opinion) labeled with try-hard environmental campaigns that Greek society generally ignores. I don’t blame them. If they can think of a way to make recycled paper bottles, I’m all in to support their efforts.
Mum usually remembers that I don’t like my water cold and leaves a few bottles out of the fridge for me, but it seems Dad saw them lying around and put them back in, probably thinking he was doing the right thing, and hoping to avoid being blamed. So I forgive him. I understand.
“Jesus! Bloody James put them in the fridge. I can’t count on him to do anything.” Mum felt every bottle of water, wrapping her long soft and petite piano-playing fingers around the crisp crackling plastic bottles of false environment-saving hope to see which one was the least cold.
“It’s okay, Mum, don’t worry, just run it under the hot tap a bit,” I said, lifting my feet up onto the hospital-white couch and puffing a crimson no-frills cushion behind my head.
“Got any good pirated movies from the black dudes lately?” I asked, grabbing the pile of movies from the edge of the locally made and too-high coffee table. I sifted through them on my stomach, the sharp plastic corners of the covers digging into my flabby pale skin.
“No, not really,” she said, throwing me the bottle of water, and then wiping away the splashes around the sink with her beloved orange microfiber cloth. “They’re not coming round this end of the island much anymore.”
Thank goodness for the remnants of high-school tennis reflexes, otherwise I’d have spent the entire weekend nursing a bruised forehead.
“They probably got sick of everybody turning them down. Everybody treats ’em like shit.” The microfiber cloth made a thud, like a bare foot stamping on flat soil, as Mum threw it into the sink on ‘shit.’ “Except for James—he spends at least an hour looking through bundles and bundles of the bloody things, and then gives ’em about fifty Euros for twenty Euros’ worth of movies.”
Mum shuffled a few things around on the kitchen counter, opened and closed a few cupboards, muttered “Jesus Christ” under her breath, opened and closed a few more cupboards, then finally pulled out a packet of cherry liquors. “I keep forgetting James is a saint—or so everybody keeps telling me. I wish I could see the saint,” she continued, shuffling to my side, then flicked her head left, right, over her shoulder and up at the ceiling. “Nope. No saint in my house—unless I’m mistaken, and a saint is someone who never puts things back where they belong, requires someone to pick up their shitty toilet papers off the bathroom floor because he always misses the bin, and who needs to be told to breathe in and out just in case they forget. Then yes, I do have a saint in my house.”
With an acerbic smile she ripped open the packet of chocolates like a scavenging monkey and offered me one with a sigh, holding the open packet toward me like a bag of potato chips.
“Mind if I
have a sleep?” I asked, taking a chocolate from the bag.
“Already? You just got here.” Mum puffed up the cushions around me on the couch.
“I’m really tired, Mum. You know what it’s like traveling with Tessa. She wants me to tour her around the ferry until she’s seen every nook and cranny a kazillion times.”
“How about I make you a coffee?” she asked, lifting my legs and sitting on the couch to rub my feet.
“Agwgh,” I groaned, letting my head drop backwards like a wet towel. I closed my eyes and began to drift off, completely aware of Mum’s manipulation, yet totally ignoring it. We could talk about holiday packages and how the island is full of small-town patriarchal pompous hypocrites, or in other words, Man, after a refreshing nap.
I let my body sink into the couch like a hollow branch in quicksand.
But I was startled awake about half an hour later when Dad and Tessa came storming in from habituating with the goats.
“Last one to the music room loses!” Dad cried, almost bursting a blood vessel in his face. He ran on the spot, the way they do in cartoons when they’re trying to run but can’t seem to get anywhere. Tessa passed and made it to the music room first.
“You lostht! You lostht!” I glared at her for making fun of her grandpa’s lisp. But she just shrugged at me as if to say, “It was harmless.”
“Grandpa lost! Grandpa lost, Mummy!” Tessa pounced at me, and started to jump up and down on the couch as if it were a trampoline. I half expected Mum to bring out the ‘Betty Boo Hoo’ (Alex’s phrase), but to my surprise, instead of getting upset, she grabbed her camera and snapped a few shots.
“Okay, okay, come on, enough, someone’s going to break my ribs.” I coughed, bringing my knees to my chest to protect myself.
“Right! Who’s up for some mushroom and spinahchi lasagna?” Mum blurted out lieutenant-style, as if we had to fit a week’s worth of events into the time frame of a single evening. She put her camera into a small chest decorated with metallic elephants (more street-seller’s paraphernalia), by the TV.
