The Lovers

by Vendela Vida

  Outside, the sun was so strong she imagined she could see its rays, thin and sharp as blades. Yvonne turned left at the first street that sloped downhill, looking for a street sign to help her find her way back, but there wasn’t even a lamppost in sight. Nor were there sidewalks. She kept to the edge of the road and passed chickens and a family of turkeys. Turkeys in Turkey, she said to herself, and was briefly amused until the animals strutted closer and she saw they were scrawny, filthy creatures. She would remember them at Thanksgiving.

  Yellow houses, both crumbling and remodeled, stood clustered together, their red-tiled roofs industrial and depressing. The windows of vacant-looking buildings bore signs that said SATILIK in red, with a phone number, while the windowsills of visibly occupied houses were lined with unflowering plants potted in large yogurt containers. Between the houses sat acres of desiccated land that had not yet been developed save for failed attempts to grow grapes. The rows of vines had shriveled, leaving only wooden posts.

  From somewhere below came the call to prayer. The sound was fuzzy, as though being broadcast through a megaphone on a parade float.

  When she and Peter had first arrived in Turkey they spent a night in Istanbul at a hotel with a view of the Blue Mosque. At four in the morning, Yvonne was awoken by what sounded like a man singing beneath their window. “Can you ask him to keep it down?” she had mumbled to Peter, and he, jet-lagged, had obliged. Through half-closed eyes she saw his gray shape move to the window, and then she heard him laugh.

  “It’s the call to prayer,” he said. He crawled back into bed and, unable to fall back to sleep given their proximity to the mosque, they made love, their limbs beating at the tangle of the comforter and sheets, like swimmers struggling not to drown.

  She had not remembered this until now. Good, she thought. It was happening. After Peter’s death, she had cocooned herself in a mood, both woolly and ethereal, that had separated her from her kids, her students, from the rest of the world. But it was good to remember these things. Already the sky and the ocean felt closer, their colors brighter. She realized she had stopped walking. You can remember and move at the same time, she said to herself. Careful not to slip in her sandals, she continued down the crooked blocks until she reached the main street. Swerving mopeds and small honking cars crowded the road. The sidewalks were narrow and filled with tables where shirtless old men played checkers. Outside Internet cafés, teenage boys sold phone cards. Yvonne passed a store where rolled-up rugs, standing erect as columns on either side of the entranceway, emitted a musty scent in the heat.

  She crossed the road, quickening her pace as she approached the water. This was where she and Peter had spent most of their nights. They had walked along the promenade and, each evening, permitted a different maître d’ to beckon them to eat at his establishment. Always they sat at an outside table and watched the sunset stretch wide and narrow across the flat sea.

  Now, as she started down the length of the promenade, hope swelled in Yvonne’s chest. Hope that this would be the reward for her trip: she would feel the way she felt during their honeymoon, she would remember every conversation, every joke, every breeze, every laugh and silence, and the feel of Peter’s thigh, warm from the sun, against hers. She felt she was tracing an unraveled ball of string to its source. They had been so happy at the beginning.

  The beach was filthy. Small plastic bags, gelatinous in the sun, had been deposited by the tide on the wet sand. Dark, dead leaves swirled and settled around a boat that looked like it had docked on the beach five years before and never left. The water too looked dirty, the foam of the small waves that crashed on the beach the color of beer. The promenade itself was not half as populated as she remembered it. The short trees bordering the walkway provided little shade and had rooted themselves under the cement, creating small hills and crevices. From somewhere in the trees came the eerie daytime hooting of owls.

  Half the restaurants had been shut down. The remaining ones displayed sick-looking fish on beds of crushed gray ice. With soiled rags, waiters shooed away mangy cats trolling for food. A sprinkling of tourists speaking German sat outside the cafés, their skin sunburned to a peculiar shade of orange.

  In the distance, she saw the waterfront hotel where she and Peter had stayed. As she approached the building she noticed the balconies were bare—no smokers, no beach towels draped over railings to dry. Closer now, she saw broken windows, an overgrown lawn, a drained pool, the light blue paint at its bottom blistered and cracked.

  She looked around for food and a place to sit. In front of the abandoned hotel, by the water, stood a small ice cream parlor with an outdoor patio that overlooked the dinghies rocking back and forth. Yvonne surveyed the flavors and pointed to pistachio and raspberry. The man behind the counter, his arms spotted with white freckles, scooped her choices into a large glass bowl, and handed her a spoon with a tiny, useless napkin.

  She sat at a table and prepared herself to enjoy the coolness, but all she could taste, a moment after swallowing, was the metallic flavor of the spoon. It tasted like other people’s mouths, a century of tongues. She put the spoon down and watched the ice cream melt.

  For a year after Peter’s death, she had wondered how anyone could speak of anything else. When Matthew came to her door six months later—making the long drive from New York in only a few hours—and told her Callie had proposed to him, she thought, How can you talk about weddings? “That is the best news, Matthew,” she’d said. “You and Callie are a perfect pair.” Aurelia called eight months after the funeral to say she’d been sober two years; she’d just gotten her second gold chip at that afternoon’s AA meeting. “Oh my darling,” Yvonne had said. “I couldn’t be more proud.” Yvonne was proud, but confused, and then confused about why she was confused. How had Aurelia, who had once turned to drinking with any minor provocation, remained sober after her father’s death? She didn’t want her children to fall apart, but neither did she want them seeming stronger. Was it too much to ask them to stagger around a few more months? No. Such thoughts she couldn’t express, not out loud.

  It was best that she was here alone. Here she could remember how she was when she wasn’t twisted up and selfish. Here, with Peter, she had been generous and world-welcoming. Here, with Peter, everything had been lovely. The promenade was lovely. The water was lovely. The food was lovely. The rain, the feral cats, the keys to their hotel that they’d lost and looked for all day—it was all lovely.

  But this place, now, was not lovely. She had expected more of her Datça, their Datça. Wasn’t Turkey the home of Troy and Ephesus? A land where archaeologists came and were startled to find entire towns as they once were? But Datça had not been preserved. It had been looted by tide and tourists and the scalding sun that robbed boats of their color. It was now a destination spot for Italians and Hungarians who had been deceived by unknowledgeable travel agents. Even the Brits in Marmaris didn’t make it this far; they knew better.

  She walked back up the hill. A black dog turned a corner and sprinted toward her. Three men were trailing the animal, yelling, and Yvonne was nearly toppled as a fourth man joined the chase. He captured the dog. It was a big dog, Yvonne thought, until she saw it was a goat. The four men circled the poor animal, holding him captive. When Yvonne reached the top of the block, she turned to see the goat being slung over one of the men’s shoulders. The animal’s front and back legs were tied together with rope and his head turned left and right, as though in disbelief.

  Yvonne was breathing heavily by the time she got to her street. Her face pulsed with heat, and she felt sweat trickling down the back of her thighs. The hem of her skirt seemed to wipe at it with each step. The website listing had claimed the house was only five hundred meters from the ocean, but this too had been an untruth.

  She paused outside the house and squinted. A woman was standing at the door.

  “Hello?” Yvonne said as she climbed the stairs.

  “Hello,” said the woman. She was slight,
striking, with straight brown hair that fell below her shoulders.

  “Can I help you?” Yvonne asked as she reached the patio.

  “I am Ali Çelik’s wife. Özlem.”

  “I’m Yvonne. Nice to meet you.” Yvonne extended her hand. Özlem’s grasp was bird-like. She smiled tentatively, revealing a narrow but not unattractive gap between her front teeth.

  Özlem stared directly at Yvonne, with a look that suggested she was trying to determine something about her. But what? Whether she was wealthy? Whether she had once been pretty?

  “Please,” Yvonne said, holding open the door. “Come in.”

  Özlem stepped inside tentatively. She had round hazel eyes that looked into Yvonne’s and begged please.

  “Would you like to sit down, Özlem?” Yvonne offered, gesturing toward the living room.

  “Thank you,” Özlem said.

  She was wearing a sheer fuchsia blouse, tight jeans that narrowed at the ankles, and high heels with pointed toes. Her outfit seemed better suited for a nightclub than a casual visit to a beach home. Yvonne asked if she’d like something to drink—tea? Özlem placed her hands together, as though to applaud the idea.

  In the kitchen, Yvonne placed the kettle on the stove. She removed a small carton of cream from the refrigerator, and as she closed the door she glanced at the photo of Ali Çelik on the boat. Then she looked closer. She studied the woman with her arm around his waist. The woman had the same color hair as the guest currently seated in the living room, but her nose was straighter, her eyes almond-shaped and not round. The woman was not Özlem.

  The kettle began to hiss, the prelude to a whistle, and Yvonne turned off the flame. She floated the tea bags in two mugs and placed the mugs and sugar and cream on a tray.

  Yvonne knew now that Özlem was not the woman on the refrigerator, and not the woman in the photo beneath the couch. She returned to the living room to find Özlem sitting upright, looking around with the curiosity of a first-time visitor.

  “Thank you,” Özlem said as Yvonne placed the tray on the coffee table in front of her.

  “Tea and sugar,” Yvonne said, and smiled at her own joke, a joke Özlem did not get.

  “My husband told me about your husband,” Özlem said. “I am sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Yvonne said, and then felt foolish to have thanked her. But it was a relief to not have to tell the story again.

  “So you are alone here?”

  “Yes. And then I’ll meet my son in a week. My son and his fiancée. And my daughter and her boyfriend.”

  Özlem nodded, as though to dismiss her own question.

  “How long have you and Mister—how long have you and Ali been married?” Yvonne was testing Özlem, still deciding if she was a deluded ex-wife or a fibbing lover.

  “Well, we were married five years, and now I don’t know…do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Fine,” Yvonne said. Aurelia had started smoking when she’d stopped drinking the first time, at sixteen, and Yvonne had grown used to it.

  Özlem tried three times to get her cigarette to light, swearing in Turkish each time it didn’t. Finally successful, she inhaled deeply and threw back her head. She was a beautiful woman.

  “We were married for five years and then I decided I wanted a divorce.”

  Yvonne nodded. Teaching had taught her to be a good listener. She had learned not to say Yes or Excuse me? or express any surprise. She had discovered people felt most free to say what was on their minds when Yvonne bobbed her chin up and down encouragingly.

  “And so he took a girlfriend,” Özlem said. “This is the girlfriend’s house.”

  Yvonne tried not to increase the range of her nodding. She kept it consistent, a metronome.

  Özlem took another drag of her cigarette. It was unclear whether she was going to speak again.

  “And what happened to the girlfriend?” Yvonne asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean where did she go? She’s not here,” Yvonne said, and gestured around the room with her eyes.

  “Her mother is ill. She returned to Paris for two months.”

  “And then you came back here?”

  “Ali thought it was a good time for us to see if we are able to work things out.”

  Yvonne nodded. Özlem’s story added up.

  “Ali bought her this house,” Özlem said, looking around with a mixture of distaste and awe.

  “Why did she need her own house?”

  “She didn’t. It was one of his grand gestures. He bought me a house when we met. And I can imagine she probably did not so much like being in that house. All my things are there. Even when I went back to Istanbul for a while, when I was considering a separation, I left everything in the house.”

  Yvonne watched Özlem’s cigarette. It was balanced on the ashtray, the ashes about to drop to the table.

  “Why did you want a separation?” Yvonne knew she was violating her own rule, but she was curious, and Özlem didn’t seem shy.

  Özlem took a drag of the cigarette and the ashes fell on her jeans. She brushed them off, annoyed. Then she looked Yvonne in the eye. “He hit me,” she said.

  “Oh dear,” Yvonne said, though something about the way Özlem said this disturbed Yvonne on another level. “Oh my dear. I’m so sorry.”

  Now it was Özlem who nodded, accepting the sympathy. “So I left,” she said. “I went to Istanbul and I tried to be a single again. I tried to pursue the career I had when Ali and I met.”

  “What was that?”

  “I was a face of Dove.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You know Dove?”

  “No.”

  “The soap?”

  “Oh, yes, the soap.”

  “I was one of the faces of Dove.”

  “That’s great,” Yvonne said. For the first time, she thought she saw Özlem smile a happy smile. “Have you always been a model?”

  “No. I studied at a hotel and restaurant management school in Switzerland. But I hated it. I went because it was the occasion to live abroad. But I knew I didn’t want to work in the travel industry.”

  “I can see that,” Yvonne said. It was hard enough for her to watch students pass through her classroom each year. She couldn’t imagine getting to know guests only for a week, or even just a night.

  “I didn’t want to spend my life working for other people. To be sweet and nice even if they are terrible people. That’s not easy for me.”

  “But you learned English at the school?”

  “Yes, I’m a fast learner,” she said with the complete immodesty Yvonne had frequently observed in people speaking in their non-native language.

  Özlem took out another cigarette, and then, as though recalling that she had just finished one, put it back in its box. Merit Lights.

  “So, how did you start modeling?” Yvonne said.

  “It was so funny. I just come back from Switzerland and I was in a shopping mall with a girlfriend of mine. I was trying to buy makeup and the woman at the makeup place said maybe I want to have something to cover my freckles. I got upset because my whole life people have been making me feel bad about my freckles. So I am walking through the mall, very upset, and a man comes up to my friend and me and says he would very much like to make my photograph. I ask him what for, and he says he is looking for people for the campaign of Dove. So he makes my photo, and I feel better, but I don’t think anything will happen, do you know? It is rare when things actually happen.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Yvonne said, trying to decide if it was.

  “But then a few days later, I get a call asking me to come in for a photo session. It was so much fun. They dress me up, and give me lots of champagne to drink, and there are many people telling me how beautiful I am. ‘Oh, you are so beautiful. Beauty, yes, you.’ It was a great day. And then a week later they tell me they want me to be in the campaign of Dove in Turkey. They want me to be the freckle girl.”

  �
�The freckle girl?”

  “In every country—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait—they have one girl in the campaign who has freckles.”

  Yvonne tilted her head the way she did when she was trying to understand something.

  “Because underneath my picture it says ‘I have freckles, but I’m still beautiful.’”

  “Freckles aren’t beautiful here?”

  “No, here they’re ugly. Is it not that way in America?”

  “No,” Yvonne said. “No.” She looked closer at Özlem’s face. “But you don’t have that many freckles!” She counted maybe five on each cheek.

  “I do, but I don’t care anymore, because they are what got me a job. I was on billboards all over the country, and when you buy a soap, a Dove soap, my picture is in the pamphlet.”

  “I’ll have to go look,” Yvonne said, gesturing her chin toward the stairs.

  “I am doubtful there’s any soap in this house. I am doubtful she allows Dove soap here!” She scoffed theatrically.

  Özlem’s face turned toward the window. “It was the first campaign I did and then I met Ali. It was so funny. He saw the billboard. Everyone saw the billboard—it was all over. And he came up to me at a club in Istanbul one night, a very nice club—he was there with some business people—and he said, ‘You have freckles, but I still think you’re beautiful.’”

  Özlem laughed. She looked five years younger when she laughed. Yvonne guessed she was twenty-eight or twenty-nine.

  “And then you moved to Datça?”

  “We dated for a while, and then he asked me to marry him. And then, yes, we moved down here. I was never happy here, though. I don’t like this town. I like my house and the vineyard, and we don’t really need to leave it, but I don’t like this town.” She looked at Yvonne. “Sorry,” she said.