by Vendela Vida
“Ah,” Yvonne said. “Everyone likes to mark their terrain.”
Yvonne hoped Deniz would sit so they could talk, but she turned toward the stairs and descended into the cabin.
There was more talk of Jimson and Carol’s stay in Istanbul—the taxi driver who couldn’t find the Blue Mosque, the unrelenting heat, the bridge over the Bosporus that alternated colors at night, the exorbitant price of Internet access at the Suisse Hotel. When there was a lull, Yvonne moved to the large cushioned seating area of the boat, just behind the table, and propped herself up with the large red, orange, and yellow chenille cushions. She opened her book so she would appear to be reading, but she listened to Jimson and Carol’s chatter.
“Do you think Tessa would want one of the Turkish plates?… . “Do they hang things like that in dorm rooms? They don’t frame posters they put up.”…“I think she has a fridge in her room this year, but not a real kitchen.”
Yvonne thought about how the meaningless talk between couples could fill days, years—an entire marriage. Sometimes it was the meaningless talk she missed most. She leaned over the back of the boat, studying the patterns of water in the wake. For a brief moment, Yvonne thought it was not impossible that she might meet a man one day and remarry. Then she exhaled sharply, extinguishing the thought as she would a candle.
From far away, Yvonne could see the famous beach, white as the moon. When they got close to shore, they nestled between two boats the same size as theirs. Yvonne felt the anchor drop; a moment later, she heard a splash. The younger crewman had jumped into the water and was swimming with his chin above the surface, the boat’s line between his teeth. Deniz and Captain Galip yelled to him as he tried three times before successfully tying the rope to a boulder jutting from the shore.
“I guess I should go change into my swim trunks,” Jimson said to Carol, before descending the stairs. “You?”
“I’m all set,” Carol said. She pulled on the neck of her tunic to reveal a bikini underneath.
The harbor was crowded with pleasure crafts. The yacht anchored to the right of Deniz II bore flags from several countries, as though it was trying to befriend everyone at sea. Yvonne heard splashes coming from near the gulet to their left. Two men had cannonballed into the water and were calling out to each other in English. Yvonne tried to place their accent—South African? Australian? The flag on the boat provided no assistance. It was a Turkish flag, a chartered boat.
“Hello,” they called out. It took Carol and Yvonne a moment to realize the men were addressing them.
Carol waved.
“The water’s great,” said a man in blue swim trunks. “You should come in.” British? Dutch?
“Maybe later,” Carol said. “We just got here.”
“Are you going to the island?”
New Zealanders, Yvonne decided, finally placing the accent.
“That’s the plan,” Carol said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“You ladies should take a swim over here later for cocktails,” said the other man, who was floating in an inner tube.
“Yeah, just use the password,” said blue swim trunks.
“What’s the password?” said Carol.
“Sex,” Yvonne said, under her breath.
Carol laughed.
“Red wine,” said the man in the inner tube.
“I thought you said to come for cocktails,” Yvonne said.
“Ah, the woman in pink speaks,” said the man in the trunks.
“You’re right,” said the other man. “Cocktails is the password.”
Jimson emerged from below, and upon seeing him, the men in the water stopped talking to the women and spoke more loudly to one another.
“Please,” Deniz said. “You are ready?”
Jimson, Carol, and Yvonne looked at each other before nodding.
Captain Galip lowered the motorboat and took the three of them to the dock. He pointed to his watch to signal that he’d pick them up at five; they had three hours to explore the small island. From the dock, Yvonne could see that the white sand beach was roped off on all sides, like an artifact in a museum.
They walked single-file down the long, narrow dock, and, once they reached the island, followed a well-traveled dirt path.
“I saw some snakes,” said an older British man as he passed Yvonne, on his way back to the dock. “Just so you know. Beware.”
“Thank you,” Yvonne said, unsure of what to do with the information. She would be staring at her feet all day.
“Should we explore the island before sitting down?” Carol said. “There’s supposed to be an old amphitheater. You might like that, Yvonne.”
Yvonne smiled, and Carol and Jimson took this for a yes.
The problem with being a history teacher was that everyone assumed your interest in the past was undying. Every birthday gift was an antique.
They walked along the path, toward the sign that said AMPHITHEATER. The dirt path was spotted with holes made by animals.
“Watch where you step,” Yvonne said. She had made a point of walking in front of Jimson and Carol. She was beginning to feel like their daughter, an only child on vacation with her parents, and she wanted to show them that they didn’t need to babysit her. She had lost her husband, but that didn’t make her a widow—not in the way most people pictured widows. She wasn’t frail and easily duped; she wasn’t weakhearted and dependent on others. She quickened her pace, as though escaping the expectations that clung to her.
“Hey, Speed Racer,” Carol called. “Wait up.”
The amphitheater looked like any other amphitheater. They paused in front of it for a moment, and Jimson asked Yvonne to take their picture. “Smile,” she instructed, pointlessly: they were both inveterate smilers. They placed their cheeks close to each other and looked at the camera—the same pose Yvonne had seen them assume every time they had handed her the camera that day. Yvonne imagined what their photo albums must look like: pages of photos of the two of them, cheeks attached, in front of ever-changing backgrounds. They knew how to live, it seemed. Yvonne had intermittently known how to live too—had she not?
They continued down the path. The island was tiny. Already they were near the other side and could make out the blue ocean ahead of them.
“Look at that door,” Carol said, pointing to a stone archway, the only remnant of a building that no longer existed.
“Door to nowhere,” Yvonne said.
“Let me take your picture,” Jimson said.
“I left my camera on the boat,” Yvonne said. “I realized when we got to shore, but it’s okay.”
“I’ll take it with my camera. We’ll send you the picture.”
“Okay,” said Yvonne. She had few photos of herself since Peter’s death. He had been the one who remembered to bring the camera.
She walked up the small incline to the doorway, stepped up onto the threshold, and screamed.
On the other side of the archway, just below her feet, a cliff dropped off to the blue water at least a hundred feet below. If she had gone any further, even if she had leaned forward, she would have fallen to her death.
“What is it?” Carol cried out.
“What happened?” Jimson said.
Yvonne, now standing in front of the arch, breathing, didn’t move.
“Don’t,” she said to Jimson. He and Carol were standing on either side of her now, each of them with a protective hand on her shoulder. “You can peer over, but don’t step up there,” she said.
Jimson let go of her and approached the archway. “Outrageous,” he said after looking through it. “You’re kidding me.”
“What is it?” Carol said.
“It just drops off. No warning, no rope. Nothing.”
“We should say something,” Carol said.
“To who?” Jimson said.
“I don’t know. Someone on the island must be in charge.”
“We should put a sign up,” Yvonne said. Carol and Jimson nodded, but non
e of them had any paper or pens.
“Let’s just block the path with rocks,” Jimson said.
They all agreed this was a good idea, but five minutes into the project it seemed increasingly futile. The rocks weren’t going to prevent anyone from approaching the door. They would have to build a wall to accomplish that.
“Maybe we tell someone,” Jimson said, forgetting or choosing to forget that Carol had made that same proposal just minutes before.
They retraced their steps. Cicadas buzzed loudly, as though they too had grown agitated—as though they too felt menaced by the heat of the sun, the holes in the ground, the snakes.
Just above the beach, a few dozen wooden chaise longues and an occasional umbrella had been set up next to a small beverage stand. Men wearing Speedos spoke loudly on cell phones. Deeply tanned women adjusted the straps of their bikini tops or the thin necklacelike chains around their waists before closing their eyes and assenting to the sun.
Yvonne counted the couples. Eight sets, then nine. The couples by the beverage stand brought the number up to at least a dozen. What she was experiencing must be similar, she mused, to what a child-craving woman felt when passing a playground.
She sat down on a chaise longue near Carol and Jimson and opened her book, locating the place where she had left off. As she read about the young woman’s sexual awakening, she felt a melting within her own body, between her legs and under her arms. The combination of the heat and the discoveries she had made at Mr. Çelik’s house, and now the couples on the island, reminded her how long it had been since she had entertained the idea of sex. Certainly not when she was dating the ex-mayor, with the word-a-day vocabulary. Not since Peter.
She removed her sunglasses, the ridiculously large and purplish sunglasses she had paid too much for at duty-free in the Amsterdam airport, and closed her eyes. She felt beads of sweat between her lashes as she tried to remember what it had been like with Peter. From the start, sex between them had required little discussion or concern. There had been a pause in their intimacy during the years when they had been pushed apart, and when sex between them resumed, their bodies had aged. The backs of her thighs had started to sag, and his belly had grown first large and firm, and then shrunken and soft; they had politely and instinctually avoided these areas when touching each other.
In the months after Peter died, she had not been able to picture sex clearly, to remember twenty-six years of it. Now, as she leaned back on her elbows, with her eyes closed and her skin sweating in the sun, she could recall only a leg draped over hers, a wet mouth hot against her ear.
She told Jimson and Carol she was going for a swim. She hoped they wouldn’t offer to join her, and they didn’t. She walked down the wooden staircase that led to the water, the white sand beach to her right, blocked off and enticing.
The water was clear and she swam with her eyes open. When she emerged, she was out past the buoys. She laughed as she heard the splashes around her, the splashes caused by her own hands. She kicked harder with her feet and slapped at the water. She watched the ripples spread around her. She could see their boat, Deniz II, from afar. How beautiful it is, she thought. She felt a surge of happiness and gratitude. The cool water confirmed her existence, her power to propel herself, to stay afloat while below her was the unknown sea floor.
She swam back to shore and when she stood she felt the fineness of the sand on her feet. After searching for only a moment, she found a shell she thought Ahmet might like. It was coiled tightly on one end and opened like a trumpet on the other. Before stepping out of the water, she filled the shell with as much white sand as it would hold. Then she used the shower at the top of the stairs to rinse off, and joined Carol and Jimson on the chairs, where she watched the men in their small Speedos apply lotion, with slaps and caresses, to the backs of their companions.
At five they returned to the boat. The water seemed rougher now, and as Yvonne sat at the stern, she observed that the rocking of a boat wasn’t side to side, like a cradle. It was more like a clock laid flat, tilting toward three, six, nine, and twelve before starting the cycle all over again.
At five-thirty Deniz emerged from below to squint at the sky, which had darkened. She yelled to Captain Galip and he came out and glared at the sky as well, and they exchanged what sounded like unhappy words. Deniz turned to her guests, smiled sweetly, and offered them cocktails. Jimson and Carol requested gin and tonics, Yvonne iced tea.
“Please,” Deniz said, and gestured to the table, which had been set. “Please, we start eating now, and then we go to Knidos. The water become shaky.”
“It does look like we’ll be hitting some weather,” Jimson said to Carol.
They settled into the same seats as they had taken at lunch, and the crewmen brought them their drinks. Carol took a long sip of her gin and tonic through a thin straw.
They ate quickly, and just after Deniz had followed the boys downstairs to wash the dishes, it began to rain. The sound of the drops on the tarp over the dinner table was loud, pellets thrown from the clouds.
“Something keeps hitting my leg,” Carol said.
“They’re small weights,” Yvonne said. She had noticed them before—an assortment of ceramic fish, crabs, and anchor ornaments tied to the edges of the tablecloth to keep it from ballooning in the wind.
As if on cue, the wind suddenly grew stronger. Jimson, Carol, and Yvonne pulled sweaters over their shoulders.
“Captain says you come down here,” said Deniz, her head emerging from the stairway. She looked concerned.
They descended and Deniz led them into a bedroom. “I am sorry,” she said. “There is no other place. Is better here.”
“It’s okay,” Jimson and Carol said at the same time.
The room had two narrow beds. Jimson and Carol sat on one, Yvonne on the other. The rocking of the boat was more noticeable down below. Yvonne placed her hand against a wall.
“Are you looking forward to seeing your children next week?” Carol asked. Yvonne briefly wondered how they knew about her upcoming trip—had her reputation preceded her again?—before remembering she had mentioned it earlier in the day.
“Not if the weather’s like this,” she said.
Jimson laughed. “We had such a wonderful time visiting our daughter in Japan last year—she was studying there. Her junior year abroad.”
Yvonne felt an emotion that it took her a moment to identify. Envy. Jimson and Carol had a daughter who made them unequivocally proud—a daughter they visited not at rehab centers with names like New Beginnings or Crossroads, but in a foreign country, where she was doing fine on her own. A wonderful time visiting our daughter. The words were so sweet, so impossible. Yvonne heard herself sigh. If a child was not strong, was not happy, did that mean the marriage was not strong or happy? Did the struggles of the child prove the failure of the marriage? Could the two threads ever be untangled?
From elsewhere on the boat came the sound of doors banging open and closed, followed by the sound of Deniz yelling at the boys. Windows and doors were promptly locked, with a suctioning sound that seemed to trap the three guests in an airtight hold.
“It’ll be good to see my children,” Yvonne said, finally. As she spoke, she was filled with the desire to have Matthew and Aurelia draped over her, as she had when they were young. So many Sunday mornings, there had been marathons, walkathons, fun runs, all passing by their house. Yvonne, Peter, and the twins would turn the couch to face the front window and lie together, eating oatmeal, counting blue caps and red shoes and see-through mesh shirts, happy they were together and unmoving, while the runners and walkers exhausted themselves just beyond the driveway.
“You’re probably closer to them now than ever,” Carol said. “We have a friend whose husband killed himself and the wife and the kids are like this…” She labored to entwine three fingers.
“Carol!” Jimson said.
“It’s okay,” Yvonne said.
She felt Jimson’s and Carol’s
eyes upon her. “It wasn’t a suicide,” she said. “It was a car accident. A woman ran a red light and hit him.”
“Oh my goodness,” Carol gasped. “Were you in the car?”
“No,” Yvonne said. “I was in the video store. Aurelia was home visiting us from India, and…” There were too many details. Aurelia had come home from six months in India convinced she had healing powers. She’d stepped off the plane wearing an outfit of yellow silk (which, she told them, prevented her from absorbing the negative energy of others), and said she wanted to make amends.
The rocking of the boat was affecting Yvonne. All too soon, she was telling Carol and Jimson how Peter had been killed. She was telling them far too much. But she was unable to turn back.
She told them about how it started with Aurelia’s visit. Their daughter had been out of their lives for a time, but now she was back from India, home for a week. She wanted to apologize, to spend the week repairing their relationship. “I know we can get back to a better place,” was how she phrased it on the phone. Such a strange way to put it, Yvonne thought. Yvonne and Peter were reluctant to forgive her, afraid to invite chaos. “Please,” Aurelia begged. “I’m different now.” But the years had taught Peter and Yvonne to be suspicious. They were wary she would disappoint—or devastate—them again.
Aurelia arrived on a Sunday morning in spring, and by that evening Peter and Yvonne were looking for ways to slow the conversation. They didn’t want to talk so much, afraid of what they might promise her, afraid they might forgive her fully if they weren’t careful. It was Peter’s idea to rent movies—“Ten, two for every night she’s here.”
“You don’t think she’ll accuse us of avoiding serious discussions?” Yvonne asked.
“We’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime,” Peter said. He never said her name, as if the name alone caused the pain. Always it was she or her. Peter would ask what she had wanted when she called. Or he would detail a conversation with another former friend of hers. They always knew who they were talking about.
And so that evening Aurelia had stayed at home and Peter had dropped Yvonne off at the video store while he went down the street to pick up dinner. He would be back to get her in five minutes.
