Beginner's Greek

by James Collins

  “If you love someone, then you feel about them the way I’ve described, and if that person shares that feeling and you are together, then that is the highest state of being, and the happiest.”

  Holly was about to cry. She swallowed, and then laughed a little in embarrassment. She looked at Peter and Charlotte. “So, you two, nice going.” She let out a combined laugh and sob. “Here’s to you. And remember, neither of you can drink.” She raised her glass and drank.

  Charlotte looked at the curve of Holly’s face, and it seemed like the most beautiful shape in the world. Oh, Holly, she thought, how beautiful you are, how fair. And Peter — Peter was so handsome. It wasn’t a showy handsomeness like Jonathan’s, but quiet, sound, well made. Handsome rather than beautiful.

  Charlotte began to clear away the dessert plates. Peter and Holly stirred to help, but she insisted that they stay where they were. She would make coffee, she said. She took the plates into the kitchen and deposited them in the sink. She unscrewed her espresso pot (she had the jumbo size, and it had become stained a deep brown with use) and ran water into the base. A delicious smell of coffee grounds wafted to her when she opened the container. She filled the sieve, screwed on the top, and set the pot on the burner. Over Holly’s objections, she had used their wedding-present china for their little dinner party, and the demitasse cups and saucers were rimmed in gold. She set these on a tray with sugar. As she was arranging them she glanced through the kitchen entranceway, which gave her a view of the dining table and Peter and Holly. She saw that they were talking and she smiled to herself and went back to her task. Completing it, she leaned against the counter to wait for the water to boil and now gazed out at the pair. She was very happy. It made her happy to see Holly and Peter talking together. Why was that? There was this odd experience she had been having of love for Holly, and Peter too. Peter was very good.

  She watched them. Seen together, Peter and Holly gave her great pleasure. Because of the way the light fell and the composition of the view she had — with the round table-half bowing in her direction and the open curtains behind them — they seemed enclosed in a circle. Rather than mere glints, the silver seemed to give off sparks. Peter laughed at something Holly said. Charlotte never made Peter laugh that way; no one did, other than Holly. Holly looked at Peter with a smile and eyes that were open and eager. They were both leaning forward and they both had an arm stretched out a bit and resting on the table. Their hands were about two feet apart. It was typical of this night that she thought she saw a kind of yellowish white charge pass between these hands. It must have been an effect of the lights on the street.

  And then something happened. It was if Charlotte had been stunned by a bright flash. This was what it must have been like for Paul on the road to Damascus. For, all of a sudden, she saw it: Peter and Holly were in love with each other.

  Of course! It had always been evident. How foolish and blinkered she had been not to have seen it all along! Whenever Peter was with Holly, his spirits would rise. He would listen to her and watch her closely, and tiny adjustments in his expression would register her every nuance and gesture. He never looked at Charlotte that way. In fairness to herself, she had to say that these signs had been subtle. Peter did not leap around like an overeager headwaiter in Holly’s presence; he did not appear wearing an ascot when she came over; he did not blatantly sigh and moon. Nor did he behave coldly or suspiciously scrupulously. He seemed to be very natural around Holly, and when they were going to take a walk together he always told Charlotte in the most relaxed way. Peter’s manner toward Holly was respectful and delicate. It was perfect. Too perfect! How many times in history had it happened that a widow fell in love with the man who comforted her and shared her grief, her husband’s closest friend, and vice versa? But Charlotte knew that the feelings between Peter and Holly long antedated the current period. Looking back, it all became obvious to her; it was if she had suddenly become equipped with a kind of infrared sight that allowed her to see what had been invisible.

  She had never thought about it. When all four of them had been together, her attention had been taken up with her attraction to Jonathan, her jealousy of Holly, and the uneasiness about herself that women like Holly made her feel. After Jonathan’s death, as previously stated, she still felt awkward around Holly for all those reasons, plus a couple more. These matters occupied her mind; she never thought to watch Peter and Holly for signs of an attachment that went beyond an affectionate friendship heightened by a shared tragedy.

  Charlotte suddenly remembered the coffee. The espresso pot was spitting and hissing as it does when all the water has been boiled out of the base. She quickly turned off the burner, poured coffee into the cups on the tray, and headed toward the table. As she approached, Holly and Peter turned toward her simultaneously, smiling. Charlotte felt like a priestess officiating at some ceremony in which the other two were the principals.

  Holly insisted on washing up alone.

  “That was the whole point,” she said. “That I would do everything while you got ready for your trip.”

  “I’ll help, of course,” said Peter.

  “No,” Holly replied. “You keep Charlotte company, or help her. Tonight I am your caterer.” After a couple more rounds of this kind of talk — “Oh, but it won’t take a minute,” said Charlotte — Holly prevailed.

  “I guess you have a lot still to do,” Peter said to Charlotte.

  “It’s not so bad, and anyway, half the time we have to redo the stuff. Some delegate or speaker hasn’t shown up or something. Anyway, what’s the point of it all when people in some of these countries are slaughtering each other? Come on, let’s take our wine and sit down.” This was not Charlotte’s usual manner. More typically she would have immediately returned to her laptop and her sheaves. Instead, she moved over to the love seat and, looking at Peter, patted the cushion to her left. He sat where she indicated. She turned toward him and took his hand; then she rested her head against the back of the love seat and closed her eyes.

  “Tired?” Peter said.

  “Not really. Maybe. A little.” Then, after a moment, Charlotte opened her eyes and said, “It’s nice having Holly here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Charlotte was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Please spend time with her while I’m away. It all must still be very raw, and I’m sure she’s lonely.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Charlotte lifted her hand and touched Peter’s hair near his temple and then stroked his cheek. “Good, dear Peter,” she said. Then she closed her eyes again.

  Charlotte’s alarm was always set for 6:10, but it never went off, since she woke up automatically at 6:09 every day, even on weekends. She slept much later, however, on the morning after the dinner with Holly. Sitting up in bed, she felt disoriented. Where was she? What day was it? What had happened the night before? She had been in a very deep sleep, and it took a moment or two for her confusion to lift. Of course, she was at home; it was Sunday morning. Peter’s blue-striped pajamas (all of Peter’s pajamas seemed to have blue stripes) lay draped over a chair. Suddenly Charlotte felt a stab of panic. She was leaving that day and she still had a million things to do! She began running over them in her head (confirm with Agnès, slides, draft to Théophile-Hector, dry cleaning, most recent figures . . .). Why in the world had she wasted all of last night? The whole point of Holly’s cooking dinner was to leave Charlotte free to work. Instead, what had happened? Charlotte had had some drinks with Holly and talked to her for ages and had helped her cook, and basically abandoned all the things she had to get done. At this moment, Charlotte was having a hard time making her images and memories of the previous night cohere. She had gotten pretty drunk, she realized; her body ached, and someone had been tossing her brain around, bruising it. A sort of haze illuminated with bright lights enveloped those hours.

  Charlotte got up and groggily walked to the kitchen. There was no sign of Peter, who was probably on his ru
n. She poured herself a glass of water, and as she drank it the mist lifted a bit. Holly. Yes, she remembered now, this crazy feeling of affection for Holly. And a smile involuntarily came to her lips; traces of the feeling remained. But what had that been all about? She removed the coffeepot from the drying rack, filled the base, and set the sieve in it. When she opened the coffee container, the smell of the coffee, finely ground, dark, was strong. Charlotte reacted to this stimulus by immediately turning to look through the kitchen doorway at the dining table, which still had its cloth on it. The window behind shone with a dim, clouded glow. Charlotte stared at the table, the tablecloth, the curtains, the chairs, still arranged as they had been the previous night. Oh yes, oh yes, she said to herself, and there was that other thing last night. She closed her eyes; she sighed; she shook her head. She did not feel upset. She felt quite calm. My epiphany, she thought, my epiphany.

  It was now Sunday afternoon, and Charlotte would be leaving in a few minutes. She was all packed and her suitcase was near the front door. She was dressed and made up, and she looked soignée, Peter thought. Some vestigial instinct led her to dress well for a transatlantic flight. She had put her hair up in what was not quite a chignon, but something close to it, sort of: I am an American and I know that it would be presumptuous of me to wear a chignon, and yet I want to pay tribute to it.

  Charlotte was inserting some pages into a binder. For the next week, it would be her most precious possession; using it, she could almost instantly determine where each delegate was supposed to be at any given moment or find a driver’s cell-phone number or provide an important statistic. One night she had stayed up until two in the morning redoing the tabs in order to implement a new system of color coding. A few weeks before, in a carefully thought-out act of spontaneity, Peter had bought Charlotte a chic attaché case, thinking it would be especially nice to have for the conference. Unfortunately, the binder was too big to fit into it, and she would have to leave it behind.

  Charlotte was sorting and shifting papers at the dining table. Peter stood nearby, leaning against the wall. They had been talking of this and that.

  “Is it going to be awkward,” Peter asked, “seeing Julia down at the house?”

  “I don’t think so,” Charlotte answered. The marriage of Charlotte’s father and stepmother had undergone some recent strain and they were divorcing. “My father is too civilized to be hurt or offended. Or anyway, he’ll act as if he is. Part of the shtick.” Charlotte paused. “I like Julia and she’s a friend. I’m looking forward to seeing her.”

  “I like her, too. It’s kind of a mess.”

  “It is, but she sounds pretty calm and content.”

  “Well, that’s good. Please give her my best.”

  “Oh, I will. She’s fond of you.”

  Charlotte closed up the binder.

  “There, that’s done.” She put the binder in a large, satchel-like briefcase which, struggling a little, she zipped closed.

  “Say, Peter,” she said, “how about a glass of champagne to see me off?”

  This had never been part of the routine before.

  “Uh . . . sure,” said Peter. “Uh . . . let me get it.” He hesitated. “Uh . . . not to be a wet blanket, but are you sure you won’t feel woozy on the plane and get a headache and everything? Because, usually —”

  Charlotte shrugged and smiled. “Oh, I’ll live on the edge, just this once.”

  “Okay, great!” said Peter. He got a bottle of champagne and two flutes (wedding presents). Charlotte had sat on the love seat, and Peter sat beside her. He opened the bottle without allowing the cork to fly anywhere, and he poured them each a glass.

  Taking a sip, Charlotte savored it, and then said, “My father. The only time he showed a moment of emotional involvement in our wedding was when he learned what champagne and wines we were serving and ordered that they be upgraded.”

  Peter nodded. Charlotte rarely spoke disrespectfully of her father.

  “And the worst thing about it? Of course he was right, wasn’t he?” She looked at Peter.

  “Well, yeah, true fact. He was.”

  “If you ever need someone to tell you what kind of champagne to order or” — she looked at Peter with a smile — “the way to open a bottle —”

  “Or,” Peter said, “the right way to fold a handkerchief and get it into your breast pocket. The knife — my whole world changed.”

  “Dick. Dick. Dick.” Charlotte sighed.

  Peter studied her. She was looking unusually pretty today, and she was acting unusual. Typically when she would go off on a trip like this, she took up the last few minutes before she left with checking and rechecking her carry-on bag to make sure it had slippers, vitamin C, vitamin E, antibacterial hand wipes, moisturizer, and melatonin. Where is my Occitan dictionary?! She was usually in a state of panic. Certainly the day had been full of heaving preparations. But here, at the last minute, she was asking for champagne! She had acted funny the night before. Peter took her hand. Then when he looked at her he saw that she was almost crying.

  “Charlotte,” he said, “are you okay?”

  Charlotte clasped Peter’s hand tightly. She looked at him and smiled; her eyes brimmed with tears like a glass of water that would overflow with one more drop.

  “Oh, Peter, you’re sweet to ask. You are always sweet. The pressure of all this, I guess, maybe my father and Julia —”

  “But you’re crying —”

  “Crying? Crying? I don’t see anybody crying.”

  Peter gave Charlotte a handkerchief, and she dried her eyes as discreetly as she could.

  “Of course,” she said, “there’s also the fact that I’m going to miss you.”

  “Oh, Charlotte, I’m going to miss you, too. However busy you are, you’ll at least be in Paris, and eating in Paris. I’ll be sitting here all alone, ordering Thai food —”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be at work, and you and your pals will find some way to expense five-course dinners.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. The firm’s been tightening up.”

  “Okay, maybe not. Really, you should see people and do things. Don’t work the whole time. Holly’s coming over today, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is, as a matter of fact. We were going to take a walk after you left.”

  “Well, good. I really like Holly so much. I think the only reason she’s gotten through it all is because of you, Peter. You should keep up the good work.”

  “She has lots of friends, her sister, her mother and father —”

  “I know. But she’s very lucky to have you.”

  Peter didn’t know what to say to this. He shrugged self-deprecatingly.

  “Let me just have half a glass more,” Charlotte said, “and then I better go.” Peter refilled her glass and his own. “This is extravagant. You’ll have to think of some way to use up the rest of the bottle before it goes flat.”

  “We have that vacuum thing. I’ll keep it until you get back.”

  “Oh good,” Charlotte said. She looked down shyly.

  Peter suddenly had a premonition. Charlotte was about to say this to him: “Do you remember the last time we sat alone right here drinking champagne?” She would be referring to the evening Peter asked her to marry him. After a moment, she looked up at Peter, shyly. She spoke:

  “Do you remember —”

  “The last time we sat alone right here drinking champagne? It’s funny, I was just thinking about that myself. It was before we went to that Rangers game last winter —”

  “Peter, you had two friends here, and it wasn’t champagne, it was that weird stout or whatever you bought.”

  “No it wasn’t!” Peter frowned. “Oh, wait a minute. Maybe you’re right.” He thought for a moment. “I know: Bastille Day.”

  “We’ve never done Bastille Day.”

  “The anniversary of the Battle of Crécy?”

  “At Crécy, the English won!”

  “Sorry.” Pet
er winced. “Okay, let me think. You and me. Here. Some sort of occasion. Champagne.” Peter paused, and his expression grew more sentimental. He and Charlotte looked into each other’s eyes. In his, he hoped, Charlotte accurately read nothing but affection.

  “It was,” Peter said, “when I asked you to marry me.”

  Charlotte just nodded. Then she moved her face toward Peter’s. He reciprocated, and they kissed.

  6

  In southwestern France in October, the saffron blooms, and the purple of its blossoms matches the purple on the rim of the horizon when the sun has just set. Each evening, Julia watched the sun set from her flagstone terrace, and she loved to see that rim appear. She loved her house, and she loved it in this season, when the trees and grasses were green but on the cusp of their turn to gold. It was still quite warm during the day, although damp and chilly at night, especially if you lived in an old stone house heated only by fireplaces. Previous owners had put in plumbing and electricity, and she and Dick had often vowed to heat at least part of the house, but her heart had not been in it, so this was never done. (The cold bothered Dick quite a lot, and one effect of their failing to modernize was that Julia was able to spend more time here alone.) She loved the house. She loved eating trout and perch and walnuts and plums. She loved the friends she had made; she loved M. and Mme. Gorotiaga, the couple who worked for her. She loved the landscape with its outcroppings of limestone and the rows of erect poplars. She loved the nearby castles, villages, churches, ruins, dolmens, and caves. Layers of civilization had been laid down here over tens of thousands of years, so, sitting on her terrace watching the sun go down, Julia felt she was part of something very ancient. It was a moment not only of pleasure but also of awe and exaltation.