Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  Chapter 20

  After my dealings in Dickson, Tennessee, the last place I wanted to visit—anywhere—was a police station. The one in Molyvos, at least, looked like a retirement villa with a terra-cotta roof and a few cats mewling around. I half expected a Greek grandmother—a ya-ya, as Thodoris called his—to wave us inside and offer us a few dry cookies on a plate.

  Inside, a powder of boredom had, in fact, settled over the place. As soon as Ashley and I walked in, the one officer on duty jumped up from his desk, overly solicitous, and began straightening his shirt.

  “I am sorry, my English, she is not so good.” He introduced himself as “Officer Vanis,” then offered Ashley a seat as if he were a maître d’. “Please, parakalo. Would you like coffee?”

  Okay. Clearly we weren’t in Tennessee.

  He asked Ashley a few polite questions concerning her stolen passport and wallet, jotting down her answers on a lined notepad in Greek. “I am very, very sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Lesvos has always been very safe island. But now, with all the refugees, many people getting robbed. My neighbor, some refugees take clothes off her clothesline. Pants and socks, they steal. She sees one man wearing her husband’s shirt.”

  He looked at Ashley sympathetically. “We can make raids of camps, check papers, try to arrest, but too many people. Too many people coming and going to catch the criminals. The ones who robbed you, do you maybe know if they are from Iraq? Pakistan? Syria?”

  Ashley looked down at her lap, then at me. She fixed me in an unreadable gaze.

  “It wasn’t a refugee,” she said almost inaudibly. “Refugees didn’t steal my stuff.”

  “Ash?”

  Officer Vanis frowned. “You know this for fact?”

  She gazed into the middle distance now. “It was this guy I met on the ferry. A Serbian. Him and his friend. They came with a car. They took some other people’s stuff, too. And a box of medical supplies from the camp.”

  At first I thought maybe my daughter was attempting to deflect the blame, shield the most vulnerable population on the island. But no. I could see it in her face. Of course. The Balkan Romeo. It made total sense now. I should’ve figured it out sooner, in fact. Where the hell was my brain? Suspended somewhere in the airspace between Memphis and Lesvos, I supposed.

  “Your boyfriend, he robs you?” Officer Vanis looked at Ashley, his face transforming into something less forgiving. I could feel him reassessing her, us, his judgment accumulating. Oh no you don’t, I thought.

  “For what it’s worth, Officer, he sounded like a real operator,” I interjected. “He pretended to be a volunteer, targeted my daughter, romanced her—”

  “Jesus, Mom. Really?”

  But Officer Vanis had already sized her up: her clothes, her age, her femaleness, of course. Already, we’d gone from being tourists to “whore” and “mother of whore.”

  He frowned. “You have name of this boyfriend?”

  “Um, Poz?” She rotated her wrists.

  “That is it?”

  Ashley’s face reddened. She stared at the floor again.

  “It could happen to any of us, Officer.” I gave him my most winning smile. “You know what it’s like when you’re young. When you think you’re in love.”

  I held his gaze as if challenging him to a duel. But smiling, still smiling. See, Joey, this is what we women go through.

  Though his disapproval was still on full display, the officer sighed and massaged his own neck and looked over at his dusty computer. “I can make for you official report. For customs here at airport and for American embassy. But?” He shrugged in a way that made it clear that neither Ashley’s belongings nor Poz would ever be tracked down. “You have to be careful,” he scolded. “Bad people come here to take advantage. They steal from the volunteers. Make big black market for passports.” He turned to me. “They steal from refugees, too. Even at sea. Pirates stop the rafts, tell the refugees they will drown everyone if they do not hand over all their valuables. So everybody, they come and steal from everybody. So do not be so friendly with strange men. Do not wave your purses and jewelry around. You girls must be very careful, do you understand?”

  Jewelry? Girls? With beleaguered motions, Officer Vanis printed out the report, stamped a copy, signed it, and handed it over to us. “Enjoy Lesvos.”

  When we got back outside, Ashley chewed her lip and stared down at the ground. She looked as if she was about to cry.

  I snorted. “Well, that wasn’t at all sexist or condescending.” But Ashley didn’t even smile faintly. It was clear now that there was still a lot she was withholding from me, but I couldn’t force the information out of her. Certainly not there, not then. We were living together in a utility room in a Greek village with exactly two streets. There would be time. “Shall we at least get you some clothes?”

  Ashley glanced around miserably. “I can’t believe that we’re just going to go shopping now.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Molyvos was a charming medieval town; its cobbled streets, which wound all the way down the mountainside to the sea, were dotted with ice cream parlors, handicraft boutiques, and souvenir stands with bins of garish T-shirts and plastic swimming shoes. But as Thodoris drove us in along the town’s waterfront, we’d passed scores of refugees who’d just arrived, trudging up from the harbor with the remains of their possessions.

  “It’s like on the airplanes, Ashley,” I sighed. “They always say to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping anyone else put on theirs.”

  She crossed her arms. “Jesus, Mom. How many times are you going to keep telling me that? You say the same thing over and over.”

  I came to a standstill in the middle of the street. “You know something,” I said suddenly. “You can just keep wearing Dagmar’s flip-flops if you want.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To keep humiliating me.”

  “Excuse me? I just stuck up for you back there, Ash. I didn’t berate you for not telling me before that Poz was the one who stole your stuff.”

  “Well, you’re berating me for it now.” She chewed her lip, refusing to look at me. After a moment, she added softly, “I just feel so stupid.” She twisted her wrists around, “And now, like, I just don’t want everyone thinking that we’re all, like, ‘Kardashian,’ when everybody else here has nothing.”

  “You have nothing, Ash. You have no underwear. You have no shoes. It doesn’t get much more ‘nothing’ than that. Trust me.” I shook my head. “Nobody’s going to mistake you for a reality star.”

  When we finally finished with our purchases and reunited with Thodoris at a café, I plopped down beside him and pressed my fists to my temples. As soon as Ashley headed off to the bathroom to change into her new clothes, I groaned, “Don’t let Dimitri grow up to be a teenager. Just skip that part if you can.”

  “Ah, teenagers.” Thodoris raised his coffee in a toast. “There is a quote. They cut their teeth on our bones.”

  “Funny. My husband says practically the same thing. Of course,” I added, “he is a dentist.”

  “Your husband,” Thodoris said in a way that betrayed his curiosity. “He is still in America? Or does he wait for you in Athens?”

  “He’s home. In Detroit. With our son.”

  “Ah. So he is good father. How long have you been married?”

  I squinted out at the sea. “Too long.”

  “Oh?”

  Taxi drivers: They were like bartenders for sober people. A small bird soared and looped above the marina. I fixed my gaze on it. I heard myself say suddenly, “Everyone always says when they get married, ‘Oh, I want to grow old with this person.’ But the thing is, I somehow never really understood that meant we’d actually age. And our needs would change— Or how I would feel…” My voice trailed off.

  Thodoris looked at me. “Stavroula and I, we fight about the best things in our life—our house, our son, our vacation. We fight about these more than the bad things. Like her father being sick?
That, we never fight about. But Dimitri’s christening? Now, she is inviting twenty more relatives.”

  He stared into his coffee for a moment. “Love, you think it is easy. That you just feel it so it will do the work for you. But it is complicated. It is very easy to misunderstand someone.”

  To my surprise, my eyes started to tear. “Sorry.” I fanned myself. “I’m just very emotional.”

  He handed me a paper napkin to blow my nose in.

  “Before I fall in love with Stavroula, oh, I am in love with Vasso. We are teenagers, so, all day and all night. Vasso, Vasso, Vasso. I am crazy in the head. Yelling up at window, sneaking onto beach, big fights, like Greek drama, yes? Then, I am in love with Stavroula. I am not so crazy, but I feel like I come home. I feel like my heart gets bigger, like I want to be good man. Then, we have Dimitri, and I feel whole new level of love.”

  “Yeah, I felt that too, with my kids.” I wiped my eyes quickly with my napkin. “Though I can tell you right now, at this very moment, I am not loving my daughter so much.”

  “Yes, well. She is teenager! But you fly halfway around the world for her.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That I did.”

  From within the restaurant, Ashley finally emerged in a pair of cheap drawstring pants and the new T-shirt we’d found on sale and the “50% Off!” powder-blue hoodie with GREECE spelled across it in an arc of white letters.

  “Thanks, Mom.” She handed me the shopping bag with the clothes I’d lent her stuffed inside.

  “Sweetie, you look nice. Those clothes look good on you.”

  “It’s my new look.” She plunked down into her chair. “I’m calling it ‘Totally cloaked in guilt.’”

  Back at Dina’s, she flopped facedown on the daybed again.

  Standing over her, I sighed. I thought about what Thodoris had said. “Sweetie.” I settled down beside her. “Do you want me to doodle you?”

  A groan emanated from the pillow. “Augh. No. My stomach just really, really hurts now.”

  “Is it cramping again?”

  She shook her head and rolled over reluctantly, shielding her eyes with her forearm. “I just want to sleep,” she said to the ceiling.

  “Well. Okay. But before you do,” I said gently, “I’d like a little more information, please. I’d like us to talk before I head out.”

  Ashley propped herself up on her elbows and squinted at me. “What have you been doing all the time, anyway? You’re, like, never here.”

  I pulled my hair back, knotted it, secured it with a band from my wrist. “Just making myself useful. It’s a really bad situation here. You were right.”

  “Oh my God. So now you’re out on the beach rescuing refugees?”

  “No, Ash. I’m—”

  She sat up. “I can’t believe it. Even my mom.”

  “Excuse me?”

  She flung herself down on the bed again and stared back up at the ceiling.

  “Ashley. What’s going on with you? I know you’re not telling me something. What really happened with Poz?”

  “I told you. It was a blur.”

  I sat down beside her. “Did he drug you? Is that why you’re so sick? Did he have a weapon of some sort?”

  “I told you. We were just on the beach.”

  I sighed audibly. When my son was quiet, it felt like quiet. Like he had nothing to say. Or was concentrating. Or was asleep. Yeah, okay, there was more to him than that—I was sure of it, in fact—which was why I was worried—all that slipping off and weird chemical fumes and that whole creative life of his that only occasionally burst through his surface like an iceberg. But Austin’s silences felt like silence, simple, straightforward: blank pieces of paper and purified air. Ashley’s silences were the exact opposite. They were never so much silences as moods. Weather systems. An entire emotional language crackling like radio static. You had to know how to interpret it, how to palpate beneath the surface.

  This silence now was prickly and full of turmoil and obfuscation—but also longing. It was waiting. This was a silence that said “Leave me alone,” but also “Please stay” and “Please make me tell you.”

  “Ashley, please,” I said.

  After another beat, I added gently, “I’m worried. Just help me understand.” Slowly, I took her hand. She didn’t yield, but she didn’t resist, either. I began to doodle the back of it very, very lightly. “Ash,” I said quietly. “I’ve done all sorts of stupid and embarrassing shit myself lately. Believe me. We all lose our wallets and our phones from time to time.”

  “It’s not that,” she sniffled. “I just— It was just really awful.”

  “Oh, honey, tell me. I’m your mother.”

  Slowly, she rolled over and faced me. “Promise you won’t judge?”

  I nodded.

  I prompted gently. “So you were on the beach. With Poz.”

  She sighed and looked down. “And, well, I told you, we weren’t exactly sleeping.”

  “Yeah, that part I got, Ash. Were you, at least—” So much for not judging.

  “Yes, we were safe. Jesus, Mom. That part, I made sure of. But the thing was?” Reluctantly, she sat up and rearranged herself on the daybed, drawing her knees up, her thin back propping against the iron frame.

  “One minute, it seemed like we were alone on this section of the beach, and it was totally romantic. But then, like, all of a sudden, it was total chaos. I mean, organized, but still. All these people came running down and there was all this weird, whispery shouting, like, ‘Boats, boats,’ and someone else was ordering, ‘Turn off your phones so we can signal,’ and then, it was totally pitch-dark, and just one person nearby was doing Morse code with their flashlight across the water, and there are these flashes of light coming back, and these lifeguards appear—and volunteers, with water and blankets. It’s my first night—I don’t know anything—so I’m all like ‘What can I do? What should I do?’ And I want to help and I’m even excited I’m finally here, and I’m finally getting to help, you know? Some people are putting together these foil wraps that athletes sometimes get after a marathon, because it’s cold at this point, and if the refugees get to us, they’re going to have hypothermia. So I start helping with that.”

  She hugged her knees tighter and stared straight ahead. “I just have to tell this really quickly, okay? Otherwise, I won’t be able to. So. There’s all this commotion, and around then, I lost track of Poz, though I thought he was still nearby, helping these guys with these ropes. And then, all of a sudden, all these people start running. So I’m, like, running with them—we’re running down the beach, I don’t know where exactly—and one of the guys in charge has us, like, get in the water, and grab each other’s arms like this”—she held up her arms to demonstrate—“to make this human chain, and we’re supposed to, I guess, wait for the lifeguards as backup, to help any of the people from the dinghies who can’t make it to the shore.”

  She shakes her head, though her eyes are far away now. “The water’s not that deep—but I still have my jeans on, so they’re soaking wet, and my tennis shoes, too. I took them off when I was with Poz but then put them back on when all the volunteers came, and I didn’t really have time to tie them well—so they’re filling with water—though one of the girls next to me who’s barefoot goes, ‘Ow. Shit. I think I just cut my foot.’

  “And so we’re standing there trying to listen to what’s going on, and all I have on is my yellow T-shirt but no jacket, so I’m freezing, and then someone on one of the teams radios and people start shouting, ‘Move, move! Go left!’ And somehow, I guess because they’ve all done this before, everybody goes one way toward this splashing, but I’m sort of just standing back up on the beach. I don’t know what happened, Mom, but suddenly, I just stop. Because, like, some of the boats have started to come in now, and there are all these people running past me up onto the shore, and staggering and falling, and all of a sudden, it hits me that I’m, like, in a war zone. I am, like, a part of a war. Maybe not the actual b
attle, but, like? Suddenly, here are all these actual people coming up on the beach. And I can see them now, because they’re turning on their phones. And Mom, I can hear the shouting, the crying, even the sound of—” Ashley’s eyes filled up; lines ran down her cheeks. She covered her face. “There were people who weren’t making it—you could hear—there was this horrible screaming—And then, I was just running, Mom. Like, just running I don’t even know where.

  “And then, of course—” She blinked, sniffled bitterly, threw up her hands. “I barely even know where I am—or even what happened, I just feel really, really awful. I’m shivering and sweating and nauseous—that’s when I finally realize. All I have on my feet are these wet socks. I lost my shoes somewhere in the water. And my phone’s not in my back pocket anymore, either. And then I look around for Poz, and he’s just gone. And then, I find out, so is his friend. And their car. And my backpack with all my stuff in it that he said he would help guard. And I just knew, Mom. I did. And then, like, duh. Sure enough. Some other people at the camp, too. Volunteers. All their bags were gone, too. And the box of medical supplies.”

  “Oh, sweetie.”

  “It was a total nightmare. And if I hadn’t met him—”

  I reached out to stroke her cheek, but she flinched and twisted her head away.

  “And now, I can’t believe you’re forcing us to stay here,” she said. “When I just want to go home.”

  Climbing off the bed, she stalked into the grungy bathroom and slammed the door—though it was misaligned and bounced back open slightly and wouldn’t quite shut all the way, so she had to slam it again. I could hear the lid of the toilet seat clamp down, her sitting down on it angrily.

  “Ashley? Ashley, c’mon,” I said.

  I waited and waited. Yet I knew what this silence meant. A pity party—with a Crockpot stew of righteous anger. I heard the pages of Hello! magazine snapping back. There was nothing more to be done at the moment. I picked up my bag and my phone and the cheap souvenir apron I’d purchased in Molyvos. On it was a picture of a mermaid and a cartoon map of the island. LOVIN’ IT IN LESVOS! it said in mock Greek letters. “You know where to find me,” I said.