Praise for The Greek Persuasion
“Robeson makes her protagonist’s existential fretfulness about her future, and her feelings of uncertainty as she pursues a perfect romantic match, highly relatable.… Thair’s narrative will resonate with readers who are confronting their own unpredictable futures.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Kimberly K. Robeson’s interweaving narrative of love stories combines modernity and myth in a tale that centers on multiple points of view without losing direction and is done with such ease. She embeds human life in time and space, while at the same time exploring ethnic, sexual, generational, and temporal fluidity.… One is awed by an ending that balances closure and pathos, becoming and élan.”
—James Bland, PhD, recipient of an Academy of
American Poets Prize
“A personal and raw novel, full of honesty, about one person’s journey to find her place as a woman in a modern society—because labels shouldn’t matter.… What a joy to read.”
—Amy Morse, former VP of Marketing, McGraw-Hill
“This narrative discusses age-old questions in a contemporary context.… Like every mind that actively seeks fulfillment as ‘entelechy,’ Aristotle’s term for fulfilled potential, Thair must come to terms with her past—her Greek roots—and her future.… Robeson writes a novel that is both brave and sensual, and I look forward to reading her next book!”
—William Wallis, PhD, author of Hawk, L.A.
My Love, Sonnets, and One Moment More
The Greek Persuasion
Copyright © 2019, Kimberly K. Robeson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.
Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-565-0
ISBN: 978-1-63152-566-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958867
For information, address:
She Writes Press
1569 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707
She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.
All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Yiayia and Mama
and for my Love
Prologue
Rancho Fierno, CA
July, 1976
“Mama, tell me the story again. Please, Mama.”
“Okay … ” she says while taking my hand in hers, rubbing my palm lightly with her fingertips, hoping to lull me to sleep. “So, once upon a time, in Ancient Greece, at the top of Mount Olympus, all the gods would meet. Zeus would sit on his throne, with Hera beside him, and make decisions about the Greek people.”
“Mama, was Yiayia alive during that time?”
“No, sweetie, that was a very long time ago, even before your grandmother was born.”
“Mama, tell me again about Zeus and the ball people.”
“Well, people back then were round, kind of like big soccer balls. They had four arms, four legs, and one head with two faces. Each face had two eyes, a nose and mouth.”
“They couldn’t see each other, right, Mama?”
“No, but one always knew that the other was close. One was stuck right behind the other. They shared one mind, one heart, and were eternally joined.”
“And, Mama, they would roll around the earth, right?”
“Yes, Thair. They would roll around the earth, moving quickly, powerfully, as they used their arms and legs to travel at great speeds. They were strong. And they were happy, really happy, because their other half was always right there, connected to them.”
As she speaks, Mama notices that I am no longer smiling.
“What’s wrong, agape mou?” she says as she takes a strand of my dark hair and moves it off my cheek.
“I guess … well … I was just thinking that it would be nice if people were still like that.”
“Really? You don’t think it would be uncomfortable to roll around instead of having two separate legs and two separate arms?”
“I was just thinking, if your other half was always stuck to you, then Daddy wouldn’t be at work so much.”
My mother lowers her eyes and in a quiet voice continues: “So do you want to hear the rest of the story or shall we save it for tomorrow?”
“Okay, Mama, we can save it. I already know that mean Zeus will take out his magic sword and slice all the ball people in half.”
“Thair, the way you say that makes it seem like such a sad story.”
“It is a sad story! I wish people had their best friends stuck to them from the beginning, and you didn’t have to look for them.”
Mama pats me on the head, “You know, sweetheart, you’re right. Zeus was a mean fellow. It would be easier if we didn’t have to look for our other half, and we were born with that special person stuck to us right away. But let’s remember the great part of the story: that our other half does exist and one day, baby, when you grow up and are a young lady, you will meet a nice boy that will make you so happy, and all your worries will be over.”
Part I
Change
1
Encinitas, California
May, 1999
James and I are both lying on the couch, our heads at opposite sides on the arm rests, legs and feet intertwined. He is studying a book of Henry Fuseli’s paintings, and I am growing frustrated with Jane even though I have read and taught this novel more than ten times. After a few minutes, I can feel James’s eyes bore into my book. I lower Miss Eyre and hesitantly smile: “What’s up?”
“Are you familiar with the Scylla and Charybdis myth?”
“Yeah, they’re the female monsters who drowned and devoured sailors—but Odysseus got away,” I reply.
“Yes, exactly. Look at this painting,” he says while passing me an art book.
It’s an ominous painting. I can see James is waiting for me to react, so I proceed, “Odysseus’s stance is powerful, the monsters look devillike. The rough waters feel like turmoil, the colors like hell at night. But … to be honest, it’s just too dark for my taste.”
James stares at me through his dark-rimmed glasses. His intense features, velvet-black hair and aqua eyes, had initially attracted me, but now his eyes, almost translucent, seem too distant. James is a few inches taller than me, standing 5’10”, but we both look longer with short torsos and giraffe legs. We share similar features: light eyes, sharp jaws, petite noses, wide smiles—except for our skin; his is so white, and mine, honey tan, with a glow year-round. So similar, yet so different.
He’s still staring at me while I hold the heavy book, and not knowing what else he wants me to say, I set it down on the carpet since his arms are crossed.
James speaks slowly. “There’s an expression ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’ meaning ‘between a rock and a hard place.’ Have you heard of it?”
“Interesting. No, I haven’t.” I try to remain calm, but the tumultuous scene in the painting is slowly rising up off the page and working its way into our living room.
“I want to ask
you something.”
“Okay.”
“Do you ever feel like we are stuck?”
“What do you mean stuck?” I ask.
“Thair, apart from books and art, what do we really have in common?”
I’m unsettled. I sit up straighter, “James, don’t they say opposites attract?”
“Come on, Thair, you love to walk, talk, hike, bike, go out for a cocktail, a sumptuous dinner—”
“And you like dark spaces, to come out at night, and restaurants are considered a waste of money,” I continue, finishing his sentence. What I don’t say out loud is and when you have a showing, you hide in our extra bedroom, your pseudo-studio; you’re absorbed, distant, unreachable. Nothing except your paintings matter.
“I feel our life together is stagnant,” he says while looking down at the swirling waters around Odysseus.
“James, neither of us wants children. We both agree that we don’t need marriage to feel committed, so I’m confused. Where’s this coming from?”
“Are you … are you in love with me?”
I kick his foot with mine. “Of course, I love you.”
“That’s not what I am asking. Are you in love with me?”
My body quivers. Trying to sound optimistic, I continue: “James, after almost five years, who is really in love? We love each other very much.”
When we met at the gallery for his debut showing, more than six years before, his passion for his work captured one part of me, and I was smitten. James’s gentle soul, kind arms, and smart words forced me to silence my inquietude, to continue to try to be open, but I knew my heart and mind didn’t agree.
“Thair,” he repeated, “Do you see me as your other half? The one who was created just for you?”
James doesn’t believe in fairy tales; since our conversations are usually objective and analytical, rarely emotional—unless we are discussing his artwork—I’m taken aback, uprooted, even a bit angry.
“Thair, please … are you in love with me?” he repeats weakly.
I finally answer, “First, Aristophanes got it wrong in Plato’s Symposium. There is no such thing as ‘the other half.’ I should have never told you about my mom’s bedtime story. Obviously, this myth has persuaded you, too. This idea of being ‘in’ this thing that neither you nor I can define is stupid. We are happy. I love you. You love me. At least I think you do. Finish. End of story.”
As I speak the words, inside I’m thinking, I’m a part-time professor, living a part-time life. I don’t want to marry James, and I don’t want babies. My life is a merry-go-round. Every day looks like the other. I am pretending. Pretending to be happy. Just like most people I know. Core happiness is an illusion. I want to scream: Fucking deal with it, James!
He looks straight into me, a rueful expression on his face. His eyes drop, and a barely audible whisper escapes his lips, “I think … it’s time … for me to move out.”
I don’t fight. I don’t beg. I simply accept. But beyond my control, tears explode from my eyes, stream down my face, and I cry for five hours. Our feet are still interlaced. We never get up off the couch. He just closes his eyes and listens to me whimper. Words are inadequate. Finally, at midnight, I get up, dazed and disoriented. I have to give a final exam the following morning at 8:00 a.m. and can barely open my puffy eyes. I shower and come back; he hasn’t moved.
“When do you want to leave?” It’s my place after all, only one name on the deed. “You know you can stay as long as you like.”
“Yes, I know, and thank you,” he replies solemnly.
Five weeks later, five suitcases and a pile of paintings sit by the door. I look at them and feel vacant.
2
Island of Kythnos, Greece
Late May, 2000
I get up from the table, pour myself a glass of water, and look out the window. I can’t shake James from my mind. As I relive the day we separated, I can hear James’s voice, see his tired eyes. My mind still misses him, the intellectual conversations, hours of talking about art and literature, but my heart always knew something was missing. Aristotle once said the mind and heart are one. I do not feel that way—mine never agree. I know logically, viscerally, I should have been satisfied, but my heart demands more. I couldn’t tell James I was in love with him because I wasn’t. He was my best friend, my companion; his good looks should have made me want to tear his clothes off, but sex was prosaic.
This past year, instead of feeling grateful for what I do have—health, home, a job—I’ve felt lost. I remember a Greek friend telling me when I was younger: “You Americans all say you are lost! Go look in a mirror. There you are!” I laugh remembering this while looking at the calm blue water below, but I also know the emptiness inside is real.
When I told my mother I had decided to spend my entire summer on Kythnos, the island of my grandmother, she was concerned. Thair, women don’t travel alone for such an extended amount of time. It’s just not normal.
I had listened quietly, not wanting to argue with her because, ironically, this trip was the sanest option at a time when my life felt like it was unraveling. Ever since my grandmother died, ten years before, I had dreamed of returning to the island of my childhood, and since there was no one to hold me back, I knew it was time.
I rented a traditional white-washed house, a pretty little place perched high on a cliff; not too big, two bedrooms, one bathroom with a stand-up shower, and a breakfast nook with a stunning view of a cove below. The owner cleaned up the place for me, cleared away the cobwebs that grow over the nine months when these houses go to sleep.
Leaning against the sink, sipping my water, peering around the kitchen at the turquoise paintings, the blue cups and white plates, I am reminded of Yiayia’s home, yet this enchanted place is so much cleaner, better-kept. Every detail chosen by the owner captures the Greek isle’s magic and makes me even more nostalgic.
From fifteen years old until twenty-one, there was no place I would have rather spent my summers than on the island of Kythnos with my grandmother. And, now, after ten long years, I have finally made it back—a single, thirty-one-year-old woman with no children. I wonder what Yiayia would say if she could see me today? I’ve been thinking a lot about my yiayia, about our summers together, about my mother, divorced now for more than a decade, about her decisions, her choices. She had escaped from Greece, yet this country had been my escape during my youth. Once more, just as I had felt during my teenage years, I hoped clarity would come if I returned to Greece. So, the last day of final exams, I graded my students’ essays, submitted all the necessary paperwork, bought myself a brand new laptop, and had a drink with Rick and Frank to toast my birthday and show off my new cutting-edge purchase.
Rick’s words ring in my ears: “I hope you’re not taking that thing,” he had said while playing with my computer, “just to have it sit on a table.”
No, Rick, I plan on writing. Really. I remember sitting with the lovebirds that night in a dive bar in Hillcrest and Frank telling his partner to “give Thair a break. It’s been a tough year. Not everyone is as lucky as we are.”
“It wasn’t luck, Frank. You and I were actively going out and looking,” Rick had responded. Then Rick had told me: “You need to go out, darling. You need to meet people,” and then he enthusiastically added, “I’m so glad you’re finally doing something, going to Greece for the summer!”
Rick and Frank make a striking pair and are the most loving couple I have ever met. No two people love and respect each other more; they are my role models for a perfect union, and not just because they are in love and have been faithful to each other for more than nine years, but when they are together, there’s this wonderful harmony present. They clearly complete each other. They want to get married, but our country, sadly, is not there yet. When I see them, there is no doubt in my mind that they were together before Zeus had his way with them. They were the lucky ones, the ones who found their other half.
“So, Thair, will you wri
te a novel or stories, a memoir? What’s your plan? I want you to write a big, fat, juicy bestseller. With lots of sex!” Rick had said. I chuckled and told him I just want to write something.
So, I have decided that for three months of pure isolation on the sleepy island of Kythnos, I will write stories, stories about my grandmother’s life, about my mother’s, and about my own. I’m hoping that writing about the past will help me make sense of my future, and maybe retracing my roots will help me find that thing I am searching for.
3
As I sit here in this blue and white kitchen, images of my youth are overpowering. Yiayia in her regular spot, I’m across from her, asking her question after question. During those long summers, as a young girl obsessed with falling (and staying) in love, I repeatedly asked my yiayia about my grandfather and if she loved him. She just laughed: “Ti nomizis?” What did I think? I had no idea. It didn’t seem like it. She never talked about him, never seemed to be sad that he was dead. My theory was she did not love him. If Yiayia didn’t love Papou (the handsome man from a bedside picture), and my mother had admitted to me, just years earlier, that she had never fully loved my father, did I ever have a chance of loving a man? That is, loving a man completely? Mind, body, and heart.
Even though I woke heavy, somber thoughts plundering my mind, it’s another beautiful day. The morning sun penetrates the shutters and beats down on my body. I stretch my arms out and take a deep breath as the salty air tickles my nose; sliding my legs off the side of the bed, waking slowly, I saunter into the kitchen. I get the Loumides and a coffee cup from the cupboard and fill the briki with water. Struggling to light the stove with the flint, I finally get it lit and place the singleserving pot on the fire and watch the water boil.
I picture my plump, pint-sized grandmother sitting at the table, mechanically cleaning green beans. Whenever she saw me making my morning coffee, Yiayia always grumbled. She complained about her tired hands and sore feet, complained that she did all the work around the house, but when I asked her what she wanted me to do, Yiayia’s response was always the same: “Nothing.” She loved to whine. She whined all the time, but I knew that her routine complaining was just so that I would never forget to appreciate her. Yiayia complained incessantly that her daughter had forsaken her motherland for the land of air-conditioning, but at least, she would say, “You I have,” and when I would turn around, I always saw her naughty smirk. “Tell Yiayia,” she would say, “Where you go last night?”
The Greek Persuasion Page 1
