The men from table three leave Number Eleven together. “Good night,” each of them says to Pilar politely, and she smiles and thanks them, one by one.
“Good night, sir—we hope to see you soon again.”
Petros Demitriades is the last to leave. He takes Pilar’s hand in his and says her name softly, as though he is trying it out on his tongue. He holds her gaze for what seems like a long time, and she is aware of the warmth and insistence of his touch. He hesitates, as though he is about to say something, and then, almost regretfully it seems to Pilar, he turns away. “Good night, my dear,” he says, and walks quickly towards the door.
Pilar feels the jagged edges of disappointment. The night feels flat now, despite the men’s generous tips. For once, Pilar does not want to sit with Roberto and the others. She wants to go home.
As she climbs into a taxi, Pilar chides herself. What’s the matter with you? she says silently as they speed through the city streets. Let it go. He’s way too old, too married. You don’t need complications in your life.
Pilar watches through the grime-streaked window of the taxi as couples make their way home through the slick October streets from whatever night out they’ve just had. In the grainy light of street lamps, she sees lovers cuddle up to one another, heads bent against the rain. She watches as an elderly man tucks his wife’s hand tenderly into the crook of his arm.
“Señorita?”
Pilar starts. For a moment, she has no idea where she is. Has she been asleep? Has she dreamed what she thinks she’s just seen? Has she snored? Pilar sees that the taxi has stopped outside her building. The driver is looking at her, one arm draped insolently across the back of his seat. He is grinning.
Pilar is angry. How dare he. She pays him, counting out the peseta coins one by one into her gloved hand. She gives him the exact fare, pleased when she sees his face fall.
The taxi man is still muttering as Pilar slams the car door and makes her way home.
* * *
It is early the following morning when Señor Gómez telephones her. There is something odd about his voice, something that sounds both hesitant and unfamiliar. As he continues to speak, Pilar realizes that what she is hearing is embarrassment.
“It is completely your decision, of course,” he is saying. “But should you care to meet my colleague for lunch, here is the address of his hotel. Petros asks me to tell you that he will wait for you for one hour.” There is a pause. “He knows nothing of our connection. He approached me most discreetly, let me reassure you of that.”
Pilar imagines polite, appropriate Señor Gómez at the other end of the phone, weighing up the invisible odds that always seem to inform his judgment. She has no idea what to say to him.
“Should you not care to accept his invitation, then simply don’t turn up. There is no pressure, Pilar, and no harm done either way. I want you to know that I am merely the messenger. Please do as you wish.”
“Thank you.” Pilar puts the phone down, her face on fire.
She has cause in the future to remember this conversation. Above all, she will remember the phrase “No harm done.” Harm—that small, coiled, dangerous word, poised and ready to strike.
She wonders how she ever managed to ignore it.
* * *
Pilar has decided to arrive an acceptable twenty minutes late. She slips into the hotel ladies’ room and touches up her lipstick, runs a careful brush through her hair. She looks at her reflection for a moment and asks herself if she’s sure about this meeting, about this man, before she becomes, once again, impatient with herself.
It’s just one lunch, for God’s sake. Just a lunch in a fancy hotel with an older man who happens to be wealthy. Or perhaps it’s the other way around; Pilar is not sure anymore. Either way, why not?
Pilar leans forward and looks at herself in the mirror once again. This time, she holds her gaze for a moment. It may be just one lunch. It may indeed be with a man much too old for her. But one thing is sure: Pilar is acutely aware of the impact Petros has had upon her. She’s just spent a restless night with his imagined presence—all those wakeful hours filled with the way he’d looked at her, the soft way he’d repeated her name, the way he’d held her hand in his as he was leaving the restaurant.
Pilar shrugs, the movement barely perceptible in the enormous hotel mirror. She sees that it has one of those gilt rococo frames that she finds hideous: a triumph of too much money over too little taste.
Enough, she tells herself. It’s too late to turn back now.
I don’t want to turn back now.
The truth is, it is not just that Pilar has been feeling restless of late. The truth is that Pilar is lonely. Maribel and Alicia have gone, once again, to visit an elderly cousin of Alicia’s, and Pilar cannot bear to spend any more dull, endless afternoons in the confines of an old woman’s suburban apartment, filled with cats and dust and the oppressive scarcity of fresh air. Besides, Maribel and Alicia speak of only two things. One is work—finding it, keeping it, staying in Señor Roberto’s good books. The other is waiters: the swift, slim-hipped, penniless young men who serve in Roberto’s bistro downstairs.
Pilar doesn’t need to share their worry about work, but she’s certainly not telling Maribel and Alicia that. And she’s not interested, either, in the doe-eyed young men who have neither class nor conversation. Pilar has become increasingly impatient with all the limited horizons that she sees around her, hemming her in, preventing her real life from happening to her.
She wants something different. She wants someone for herself. The years are slipping by, after all. In four short years, Pilar will be thirty, a thought that horrifies her; unless something changes, she will step across the threshold of her fourth decade without ever having known love.
It is a thought that has become urgent recently, insistent in a way it has never been before. It seems to Pilar that this thought has been lying in wait somewhere, biding its time, on the alert for the slightest opportunity—an opportunity it has now sensed and lost no time in seizing, its arrival as unexpected as it is startling.
Pilar blots the edges of her lipstick one last time, makes sure her dark hair sits alluringly over one shoulder, and makes her way out through the door and towards the hotel dining room.
She prays that Petros will be there, that he will not have changed his mind.
He stands up as soon as he catches sight of Pilar. His face is alight as he greets her. “I’m so glad you came,” Petros says. “It is a real pleasure to see you again.” He holds on to Pilar’s hand a little longer than is necessary, just as he did last night: holds it insistently in both of his. Pilar feels relieved and regretful when he finally lets her go.
They eat; he talks. About his many business interests in Madrid, his friendship with Señor Gómez, his travels, his desire to see Pilar again the next time he is in the city. Would she do him the honor?
Pilar notices that Petros does not mention Cyprus. Nor does he allude in any way to home or family, wife or children. Pilar sees him glance at his watch, and the day suddenly falls away from her. He has to leave; it is clear, even without his confirming it. Petros is a busy man.
He sees Pilar’s disappointment and mistakes it for hesitancy. “Take this, please,” he says, pressing a business card into her hand.
Pilar studies it.
Petros smiles and points to his surname. “De-mi-tri-a-des,” he says. “Not unlike Spanish in pronunciation—all the letters equally enunciated.” A month, he tells her. He’ll be back in a month. “If you think you would like to see me, just call this number.” And he scribbles a telephone number underneath the official one—“My private line”—his blue fountain pen scratching its way across the thick white card.
Pilar tucks the business card into her handbag. She already knows that Petros is far older than she is—decades older. But now she sees the years etched into
the deep lines around his eyes. Pilar sees how much married he almost certainly is. She sees how impossible all of this most definitely is. But she doesn’t care.
Pilar feels this man’s physical presence as a powerful, overwhelming invitation to love. It makes her breathless; she feels as though she has been captured, carried off somewhere from which she will never return. The speed of her own transformation astounds her. She feels, finally, awake and alert and alive.
Over that long afternoon, filled with the promise of adventures to come, Pilar allows herself to fall headlong into a heedless future. It is a future that banishes her reservations, laughs at her denials, turns her certainties inside out like the sleeves of a well-worn sweater.
Pilar is lost that afternoon, and she knows it.
calista
Extremadura, 1989
* * *
Calista has difficulty getting her key into the lock. Her hands no longer seem to work properly. When she finally manages to push open the front door, she fumbles at the pad for the alarm, getting the numbers wrong. She stumbles across the threshold and drops her bag as she punches in the code for the second time.
Her perfume bottle escapes from the depths of her handbag and shatters on the tiled floor, sending shards of scent and glass everywhere. The air fills with an oversweet intensity. Calista swears out loud, her voice high and angry in the stillness of the empty house. She feels the familiar twist of anxiety as she walks the five or six steps, quickly, towards the answering machine.
Nothing. There is no red light; no message awaits.
Calista leans her back against the cool wall of the hallway. She slides down onto the floor as a wave of despair engulfs her. She begins to cry at last, tears that have been lying in wait for hours, days, years, waiting for this opportunity to escape.
Calista has been betrayed. No other explanation is possible. Betrayed, duped, lied to all over again, once more with feeling. It is now midday on Monday, three days since the phone call that reassured her the deed had been done, the transaction completed, the nightmare over. She’d left Rosa and Jaime just half an hour ago, filled with certainty that finality now awaited her. But it doesn’t.
Calista leans forward and rests her forehead on her knees. She is tired, so tired. And all this remembering is excruciating: a refined form of torture that has her in its grip and will not let her go. She wants it all to stop.
This day—this very day—twenty-three years ago. She can still see herself. A nervous, beautiful seventeen-year-old girl, newly pregnant, newly married, poised on the cusp of an old, old story.
* * *
It is July 1966, and they are standing in departures at Dublin Airport, all of them, making awkward conversation until the time comes for Calista and Alexandros to board the plane. Nothing happens in this conversation; everything that is significant, everything that is important is happening underneath the glazed surface of the words they are speaking.
Calista wants to be on her way, wants to leave this life behind, to fall headlong into her new one. She is filled with a delighted optimism. Her new parents-in-law seem welcoming, and this unexpected kindness gladdens her. On the night before the wedding, Petros—whose resemblance to all his sons, but particularly to Alexandros, is remarkable—spoke at length about honor, family, fidelity, responsibility, duty. Calista felt shy as this man held both of her hands firmly in his, his gaze direct and unwavering. She was conscious, uncomfortably so, of María-Luisa and Timothy sitting stiff and upright on the other side of the room.
“We must always strive to do what is right,” Petros said. “We must love and protect our families and do what is best for our children and our grandchildren; we must never shy away from our duty.” His large face filled with a sudden solemnity. “I take this opportunity to formally welcome you, Calista, as the newest member of the Demitriades family. Your parents and your brother will always be welcome in our home.”
And then Petros embraced her, kissing her on both cheeks. Maroulla, Alexandros’s mother, barely spoke—her English was fractured at best, but she nodded and smiled, although Calista was not at all sure the smiles and the nods were meant for her. Because Maroulla never took her eyes off Petros. Her gaze followed him everywhere. Calista was impressed by the older woman’s adoration of her husband. She hoped that she and Alexandros would love each other like that, too, their devotion increasing with the passage of years. Calista longed for that kind of love, instead of the precise, careful politeness that her own parents shared.
María-Luisa was impressed with Petros: she couldn’t hide it. She put her icy anger at her daughter to one side for the duration of the festivities—festivities that would have been much more discreet had María-Luisa had her way. But throughout it all, Calista watched as her mother was won over by Petros’s charm, his generous gifts, and his gestures of public extravagance.
“Our sons,” he said, beaming at everyone seated around his table on the night before the wedding. He signaled to the white-coated waiter to bring more Moët. “They marry only once, no? We must celebrate, all of us, the Cypriot way!”
And now all the wedding celebrations are over, and Calista is anxious to be on her way. As she waits, surrounded by slivers of conversation, she is aware of her new and unfamiliar appearance. María-Luisa is responsible for this, and Calista has been too afraid to fight her. A great admirer of Jackie Kennedy, María-Luisa has chosen her daughter’s powder-blue going-away suit, her pillbox hat, her white above-the-elbow gloves, and her low-heeled pumps.
Calista still remembers her mother’s excitement when President Kennedy visited Dublin in June 1963.
“So handsome,” María-Luisa had murmured. “And a Catholic.”
They’d stood outside Kingston’s in O’Connell Street the day of the motorcade: her mother, Calista, and Philip, cheering, waving flags, welcoming the president of the United States. Even though Calista hadn’t wanted to go, she found herself caught up in the atmosphere of hysterical celebration. The city—the entire country—had been in a frenzy of excitement.
But María-Luisa’s real admiration was reserved for Jackie. “So elegant, so beautiful, so sophisticated,” she declared, over and over again, until eventually even Timothy said mildly: “I think we all know how you feel, my dear.”
María-Luisa had been cross at the interruption, had retreated into a sulky silence for an hour or so, only to hold forth again on Jackie’s sense of style, her grace, and her fearless individuality.
For Calista, being so fashionably dressed today makes her feel even more conspicuous on Alexandros’s arm, although nobody is looking in their direction. She has already glanced around her several times as though searching for a friend, a ruse to avert her eyes from the knowledge of María-Luisa’s stern gaze.
Calista is a wife. The word still feels unfamiliar, formal: a bit like her unaccustomed suit and hat, as though it doesn’t fit her comfortably yet. She has tested it many times, but its strangeness still vibrates on her tongue. It is such a full word, a language all of its own. It speaks of so many possibilities. A whole new world flows from its four slender letters, a whole new weight of responsibility.
Yesterday, old Father Callery performed the Rite of Marriage, unaware of the extent of Calista’s sin. She had gone to confession on the other side of the city, at her mother’s urging.
“Father Callery knows you all your life,” María-Luisa said. Her voice and her eyes were cold as she’d pulled off her gloves, finger by unforgiving finger. “There is no need for you to disappoint him also.”
Calista felt María-Luisa’s eyes burn into her back during the ceremony as Father Callery looked at her kindly and said: “Who can find a virtuous woman?” He paused then, turning his gaze on Alexandros. “Her price is far above rubies.” He leaned forward and spoke softly, so softly that only Calista and Alexandros could hear. “Take care of each other,” he said. “Alexandros, be good to your w
ife and love her. She is indeed a virtuous woman.”
Alexandros smiled his brilliant smile. “I will,” he said. “I will.”
Husband. Wife.
Standing in the airport now, surrounded by all those she loves, Calista can barely remember her life before Alexandros strode into it in April. Three tumultuous months ago.
“That’s us,” he says now. Calista hasn’t heard the announcement, but her new husband begins to move forward with confidence. He makes to kiss María-Luisa’s hand, but Calista sees her mother pull back a little, and Alexandros’s lips reach the tips of her gloved fingers instead. He pauses for a moment, then moves smoothly on and shakes hands with Timothy. Calista cannot read her father’s expression, and his careful, deliberate distance from her now makes her eyes fill.
She knows, too, by the set of her new husband’s shoulders that he is offended; María-Luisa’s rebuff has made him angry. Calista glances in his direction, hoping that he will not retreat into sullenness on the long flight to Cyprus. Philip approaches, and Calista lets go of Alexandros’s hand and puts both arms around her brother. “It’s not the end of the world,” she whispers, “and Cyprus isn’t at the ends of the earth. You’ll come and see us.”
Her twin hugs her hard. “Of course,” he says. “Of course I will.”
Calista doesn’t let go. The strength of Philip’s embrace brings a memory rushing to the surface, something she hasn’t thought about in years . . .
“Come on, Cally,” Philip is saying. “You can do it.”
He waits patiently at the bottom of the slope, the only proper hill in the whole neighborhood. Its smooth, paved surface leads all the way up to the local shop, and Mr. Murray, the shopkeeper, turns a blind eye to the dozens of children who practice their skating skills just outside his door.
Philip and Calista are nine, and Calista is trying out her new roller skates. She hasn’t yet managed to develop the knack of marrying speed with balance. Philip has already mastered the art, even though skates are not meant for boys. All morning he’s ignored the jeers and taunts of the neighborhood kids. Calista sometimes wonders if he even hears them.
The Years That Followed Page 9
