Traveling Light

by Thalasinos, Andrea

  “Ma’am.” The woman rose from her chair, signaling the cop.

  By his unsure, modulated swagger Paula guessed he was new to playing cop, relegated to patting down chubby, frizzy-haired middle-aged women in a hurry. She darted a furtive you gotta be kidding me glance, feigning the well-practiced disdain that longtime NYU faculty use when asked to produce university ID in the entry lobby.

  “Ma’am.” The boyish cop caught up and positioned himself in front so as to body-block in case she made a move.

  Okay. She stopped and massaged her forehead as an act of surrender. Turning back, she approached the security desk.

  “I dare you to say you missed these huge signs about checking in,” the woman quizzed without looking up, making circling motions with a blue plastic Bic pen to direct Paula’s attention.

  To save face, though God only knows why, Paula craned her head as if she were shocked.

  “How can I help you?” There was nothing helpful in her tone.

  Paula held up her phone like a bidder at an auction.

  “Celeste de la Rosa. It’s urgent. I’ve got her on the line,” though Heavenly’s voice mail had kicked in.

  “I don’t care if Obama’s on the line.” The woman glared over the top of her reading glasses, pointing at Paula like she was a car going the wrong way down a street. “You’re required to check in.”

  “Photo ID in the divot please.” The woman tapped the metal tray with her pen. “Tell Barack Angie says ‘hi,’” she said without changing her tone.

  Paula wrangled out her driver’s license and checked the expiration date before complying. She rarely drove, except out to a Long Island beach in Roger’s car. He housed it in a private garage over on Lexington Avenue that cost more than most people paid in six months for rent. The attendant snatched up the license, examined it briefly and without looking up tucked it into a slot behind her.

  “You get it back when you surrender this.” She held up a temporary ID pass in a clear plastic holder on a long string.

  “Great,” Paula muttered. She glanced around for Celeste.

  “Spell the name.” Fingers poised on the keyboard, the woman waited and sighed.

  Paula sighed, too. Each for reasons that had nothing to do with the other.

  She spelled her name twice. This time she hadn’t changed it; Roger hadn’t cared. His Polish “eye-chart name” would have been worse anyway. As she studied the pink jeweled butterfly appliqué positioned near the outside corner of the woman’s eye, it looked out of character. Something belonging more on a twelve-year-old, though it matched the color and sparkle of the woman’s nails.

  “Wait here for your escort.” The woman rolled her chair toward the printer and snatched a temporary ID card. “Wear it with the front side out at all times,” she said in scripted cadence. “Check in at this desk after your business has concluded. Now step off to the side.”

  Paula slipped the string over her head as if it were some sort of perverse lobster bib and waited for Celeste. Her tote weighed a ton. When she nudged off the shoulder strap, it dropped like a boat anchor. She rotated her shoulder joint and watched the attendant tangle with the next person in line.

  “Photo ID. Your picture,” the attendant annunciated to a couple. The man smiled and shrugged. As the attendant pantomimed, pointing to her face with the pen, the couple kept shaking their heads, waving their hands with that universal gesture of “no speakie.”

  “Picture,” the woman said louder, still pointing at her face.

  Paula ran her hand over the crown of her head, massaging it with her fingers. Everything was such a struggle. Suddenly her purse felt heavy, too, and she lowered it on top of the tote. What she’d give for a cigarette, but the cop would probably use his Taser.

  “Paula.” Heavenly waved in the doorway and mouthed, Hurry up. Tucked under Celeste’s arm was a file.

  “Sorry.” Paula slung the bag of papers back over her shoulder along with her purse. “Traffic was murder.” They hurried down the polished green granite floor toward the elevators, their heels clacking as they rushed.

  The hallway lights made the diamonds in Paula’s platinum pendant shimmer.

  “Hey, ni-i-ice.” Celeste pointed. “Another new one, huh?”

  Paula touched it, embarrassed she’d not thought to tuck it under her neckline or, better yet, take it off and stuff it into the coin part of her wallet. Unhappiness buying. It was elating but made her feel foolish and indulgent. Aware of a salesperson’s eyes, Paula would chat on lightheartedly, making up this or that about a birthday or Christmas present, how her husband hates to go shopping. She’d cringe at the hollow sound of her fabrications, yet she persisted. Her Visa card would beep in approval, signaling a quick end to the pretense and the sweat that triggered the scent of her deodorant.

  The initial rush from each purchase wore off quickly. Even when she forced herself to wear a piece, the underlying sadness was amplified. Because all she’d wanted was Roger and not a collection of metal and rocks. And while no substitute for affection, necklaces, bracelets and rings were all she had to show for ten years of sleeping on a couch. It was only by pretending to be encircled in the arms of an imaginary lover that she could fall asleep. The whole thing was insane: a grown woman living in this fantasy world, sleeping alone while her husband lay snoring upstairs in a locked bedroom. How pathetic, and how grateful she was that no one knew.

  Aside from her beloved Psyche, there were days Paula wanted to gather up the entire collection and stuff it down the drop chute at the Salvation Army. It was a constant reminder of what she didn’t have. There was no answer. No solution. It wasn’t some hypothesis where running a different regression equation could yield valid results. Her husband didn’t want her. In the hard light of day, that was the bottom line—the one variable she couldn’t change.

  Heavenly would purposely go scab picking to trigger Paula’s anger. Only a week earlier, during their standing Thursday lunch date, the sparkle of diamonds in a bracelet caught Celeste’s eye.

  “God, doesn’t Roger care you’re buying stuff like this?” Celeste had asked. “Tony’d kill me.” Heavenly’s eyes punctuated the sentence for good measure.

  There’d been a brief pause, as if Paula was gathering her forces.

  “Roger doesn’t care what I do as long as I don’t ask him to be a real husband.” Her words flew like buckshot, knocking the wind out of them both. The bitterness made Paula cough. She’d looked down at her half-eaten shrimp; her stomach clenched.

  Heavenly reached to touch Paula’s hand on the table. “Yeah, but you care,” Celeste said softly. ‘I know you do, miksa mou.” The silence was painful.

  Paula had fished out a twenty and tucked it under the salt and pepper set, muttering, “I gotta get back for a meeting.”

  Roger had more money than God yet refused to throw out a pair of pants until the crotch would split open. “I guess it’s time for a new pair,” he’d say, calling Paula upstairs to view the hilarity of his white thighs bulging through a split in the fabric. His income from Columbia was mid–six figures; proceeds from national and international patents more than matched it. This, combined with the sizable inheritance from his parents, including their brownstone, set him up for life. Yet in ten years he and Paula had not bought or owned one single thing in common.

  The only time Eleni ever spoke ill of Roger was five years earlier when he and Paula had taken her out to dinner for her seventy-fifth birthday at the Four Seasons. At the end of the meal Roger had casually requested a separate check. Paula grabbed it, hoping her mother hadn’t seen, but Eleni missed nothing. Her sharp eyes pecked at Paula before she said in Greek, “I’m surprised he doesn’t shove a cork up your ass to make sure you don’t waste a thing.”

  Heavenly pushed the elevator button as they waited. “He probably spoke English at one time,” she explained. “Often in advanced old age people default to their first language.”

  They looked up at the display, waiting for
a car. Heavenly jabbed it several more times.

  “You know that doesn’t make it come faster,” Paula said.

  “Eat shit.” Heavenly grinned. “Get a name, next of kin,” she said as the door opened and they stepped inside.

  Heavenly shrugged as the elevator doors closed. “All he says is…” She looked at the chart. “‘Fotis. F-o-t-i-s moo.’ Maybe that’s his name or something.”

  “Fotis? Fos means ‘light,’” Paula said. “Like light.” She pointed at the overhead fluorescent slabs. “Fotis mou means ‘my light.’”

  Heavenly pressed the ninth-floor button. “Maybe he’s hallucinating.”

  They walked swiftly past elderly patients in wheelchairs, their bruised, blotchy skin looking as delicate as tissue paper. “I love you, honey,” one called out in grandmotherly tones as they passed. Wheelchairs were parked amid gray metal supply carts piled high with bedsheets, others with bins jammed full of syringes and glass tubes. Stands of IV machines wound up in their own wires, hooked to no one, lined up like a regimen in marching formation.

  Paula held her breath as they passed through intermittent scent clouds of urine and rubbing alcohol. Heavenly slowed at a door marked only with a patient number. Celeste took out the chart, looked at her watch, marked something and then softly knocked.

  “Come in,” a nurse’s voice.

  Celeste slowly pushed the door open, gesturing for Paula to follow.

  “Hell-o-o?” Heavenly said in a singsong voice.

  A nurse was rearranging a white waffle thermal blanket around the emaciated frame of an elderly man, tossing him around in a robust way as if he were nothing but a bundle of sticks.

  “There,” the nurse chirped to the patient. “Now isn’t that better,” she affirmed, seemingly pleased with her work.

  “Stamata,” a soft but raspy voice complained, “enough already” in Greek.

  The woman smiled at Heavenly and peeled off purple latex gloves, tossing them into the biohazard disposal bin. Gathering a digital thermometer pack, the nurse looped her stethoscope around her neck and raised her eyebrows as if to say, He’s all yours.

  The room had darkened from the storm, making it seem later than it was. Raindrops pattered against the window. The two of them approached the foot of the bed.

  “Kalimera,” Paula bid him good afternoon.

  Bedsheets rustled at the sound of her voice. The old man turned his head.

  “Ella,” he called her closer.

  Paula took a step.

  He squinted. “Paula?”

  Celeste turned to look at her.

  The voice was familiar, though Paula couldn’t pinpoint it. Like recognizing words in a language spoken in a dream.

  “Ella tho,” he asked her to come closer. His voice was weak. “I knew you’d come, Paula,” he said in Greek.

  She peered at his face in the dim light, blinking several times as she thought.

  “They said you wouldn’t.” He choked up and pointed to the ceiling so convincingly that Paula looked up, too, fully expecting to see people. “But I knew you would; I told them.”

  She looked at him.

  “Paula with the yellow eyes—Athena’s owl.”

  She was stunned. Recognition rushed her all at once and she had to sit down, covering her mouth with her hand for a moment. He was still alive? She looked at her bare knees peeking out past the hem of her skirt. He’d seemed like such an old man some forty-odd years ago. Yet he’d probably been younger than she was now.

  “Theo,” she said, calling him Uncle as he’d instructed her all those years ago.

  He smiled. She hadn’t remembered his eyes being so ghostly pale. Wisps of white hair patched his head.

  “Ella,” he called her closer, his voice almost a whisper. “Come closer so I can see you—I want to see you all grown up.”

  She stood and stepped closer, touching the side of the bed.

  His arm shuffled under the blanket as his hand struggled to get free. The nurse had wrapped him as tight as a mummy.

  Paula searched for the end of the blanket.

  “Wait for the nurse,” Heavenly said, reaching across the bed to press the call button.

  Paula frowned. She found the corner of the blanket and began to unravel him.

  “Look how pretty the curls around your face,” he said.

  She freed his arm. His hand reached for hers. It was as light as paper. He let go and reached toward her face. She bent closer and he touched her curls. No one had touched her hair in a million years.

  “Such sad eyes,” he said. “Like when you were little. Remember when you used to play with my Fotis then?”

  An uncomfortable burning sensation ached in her throat. Pain pulsed in her chest and upper back. The muscles beneath her collarbones began to throb. She didn’t know what was happening until her tear ducts stung, until she remembered the feeling of tears as they make their way up from the place inside. Leaning forward, she braced against the side of the bed.

  Heavenly stepped up and touched her between the shoulder blades. “Miksa, are you okay?”

  Paula couldn’t answer.

  “My Paula.” His voice was definitive. “You’re such a good girl.”

  A few quiet moments passed. The burning in her chest wouldn’t subside; she tried to breathe without sobbing.

  “They took my Fotis,” he said. His face contorted and then broke into a child’s sob, but his eyes were dry. He was out of tears.

  “Ksero, Theo,” she told him she knew.

  “Fotis bit them.”

  “I know.”

  His body wobbled. “He didn’t mean to.”

  Their eyes met.

  “I know.”

  “He’s my Fotis, Paula. You remember. My protector, my palikari.” His voice became a whisper. “My Fotis never bite anyone.” His hand trembled, fingers fluttering like the wings of a bird. His pale eyes were sunken and shadowed with grief. His legs feverishly rubbed against each other as if trying to ignite the energy to run. He tried to sit up. “They’re gonna kill him, Paula.”

  He wrestled with the swaddled blanket, feet swishing against each shin in a bid to find comfort. “That’s what they do.”

  “He’s getting upset,” Heavenly said, pulling on the back of Paula’s blouse.

  “Voithise ton, Paula,” he said.

  “I’ll help,” she promised. She couldn’t keep a dog, didn’t even want one.

  He tried to rise on one elbow but fell back on the stack of pillows.

  “Look, Paula, he’s getting too upset.” Heavenly tapped her arm again. “Maybe we should go.”

  “Theo.” Paula had to get a name. “Ti eni to onoma sous?” she asked respectfully.

  He seemed confused.

  “To onoma sous?” She pointed to him. “Paula”—she touched her sternum—“to ononma mou,” and then touched his. “To onoma sous?”

  He looked as if he didn’t understand.

  The familiar raspy timbre of his voice had been his name. When she was a girl he’d walked the neighborhood, wearing a long black overcoat, even in summer, a hat, carrying a plastic tote bag lined with a brown paper grocery bag and always accompanied by a dog. He’d smelled like the ocean and the beach after a long day in the sun. For weeks she’d see him every day and then for months not at all.

  Theo’s grasp relaxed. His fingers slowly opened, eyelids twitched, mouth went slack as he drifted off.

  Paula touched Theo’s shoulder through the blanket as he slept. She looked at Celeste.

  “You get a name?” she asked, but Paula said nothing.

  Instead she bent over, rummaging through her purse to get her phone. As she straightened, Heavenly looked more closely at her.

  “What?” Paula pulled back. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Paula returned the look. “No, I didn’t get a name.” She gestured with her head for Heavenly to follow her out into the hall.

  She dialed Eleni and put her on speaker.

  “Hi,
Ma.”

  “Oh, Paula, it’s you.” Her mother sounded surprised. “You never call on Wednesday.”

  “Ma, remember the old man with the dog who used to walk around the neighborhood when I was a kid?” She waited.

  “Ma—the one in the long black wool coat?” she went on. “The one I called ‘Theo’?”

  There was a long silence before her mother answered.

  “I’m busy taking up a hem,” Eleni said.

  At first Paula thought her mother was giving her the bum’s rush except for the edge of impatience in Eleni’s voice.

  Heavenly leaned against the wall and made a face. What a pain in the ass Eleni could be. Despite the gravity of the moment, it made Paula laugh.

  “Ma, I know you remember—”

  “What theo?” Eleni blurted out. “Everyone was ‘Theo.’”

  “The one you said not to call ‘Theo’ because he wasn’t my theo. And when I asked you what to call him, you said, ‘Call him tipota,’ meaning ‘nothing.’”

  Eleni was silent.

  “He’s dying, Ma.”

  Celeste took the phone. “Mrs. Makaikis, we need to contact a relative,” Celeste spoke in her official-capacity voice.

  Paula’s mother was silent, which was odd. Ordinarily Eleni would have made accusations about selfish children who move off to places like Arizona and California, leaving their parents behind to languish.

  Celeste handed back the phone. Paula tipped it up to check the bars; she looked up and shrugged.

  “Mitera?” Paula asked in Greek. “Eleni,” she called her mother by name, which she’d never done, hoping to snap her out of whatever had silenced her.

  “Ti?” Eleni’s “What?” sounded curt in Greek.

  “Remember the man who wore the black topcoat even in summer, who always carried a tote with him and had a dog on a rope?” Paula asked.

  “Dthen ksero tipota.”

  They only spoke Greek when there was something they didn’t want others to hear.

  “That’s not true,” Paula answered. “Speak English, Ma—I know you remember him.”

  An uncomfortable shuffling came through the line. Eleni was never known to falter; it was always the other party who sat on tacks.