I sense a bit of discomfort coming from him, but I don’t stop. “There’s this woman, your mother knows her. I guess she used to have a school here—some kind of frondistirio—anyway, I was wondering if you could tell me where I could find her.”
“Listen, Thair … if you can’t find her, she doesn’t want to be found.”
Who is this cocky bastard? The God of Pathetic Quotes!
“I’m sorry, that is not the answer I was looking for.” Trying to calm down and muster as much sickly sweetness as possible, I continue, “I’m sorry, you must have misunderstood. I met her in town. I borrowed a book from her, and now I want to return it because I am leaving in a few days. I just want to know where she lives. Where I can find her … to return the book.”
“Okay, I will tell you what I know. She rents a house here that is owned by a foreigner; it’s inland, in a small village. She comes every few years, but we never know when or how long she will stay. She loves this island, but had … how can I say? Inappropriate relationships. She lost so much business because of … koutsobolia … you understand? Too much gossip, so she finally had to leave. She moved her business to Sweden where people are more open-minded. That’s where her mother is from; her father, a Greek, is dead.”
Sweden? “So what is the name of the village here where she is staying?”
“It doesn’t really matter. She left weeks ago.”
My heart drops. “And how do you know this?”
“I just know. She is a beautiful woman. Magnetic, irresistible … and she doesn’t just have relationships with—”
I cut him off. I do not want to hear more. “Efharisto poli.” Though my words say, “thank you very much,” my tone is one of disgust. I can feel my face heat up; I push through the door and jump on my moped. I gas it up the steep hill, going faster and faster; my vision blurs; my eyes sting, like brooches have been thrust into them. Oedipus did not want to see the horror he had committed, and I don’t want to think about what I have done. The guilt and the rejection, both are overwhelming. But so is the beauty. I try not to see her, feel her hands on me, imagine my hands in her. It was wrong. Or was it? I wipe away my wretched tears and drive more slowly. I don’t want to be blind, but these last few months on Kythnos have created more questions than answers.
August 19th, 2000
I’ve packed my last bag. I’ve already talked to the neighbor about Tang, and she said not to worry; he comes by her place and she always feeds him, too. I take a final look around the house to see if I forgot anything. On the checkered white and blue tablecloth sits a bowl. The bowl is empty, save for one rotten tomato. I grab it, throw it in the trash, and lock the door behind me. Tang is sitting on the front porch. I bend down and rub his head as he purrs wildly in a way that he hasn’t before. I can’t take the intense emotion, my heart lacerated with each of his cries, so I stand up and don’t look back at him.
Encinitas, California
I don’t call my mom to pick me up from the airport. I look awful. I am deathly skinny, never been so thin in my life. My eyes are puffy, and my chest is deflated. My thighs swim in my jeans. I must have lost twenty pounds. The first ten were fine since I have always been a bit curvy, the second ten make me perfect for Hollywood.
My suitcase is sitting by the front door, so little energy to unpack. I make my way over to the TV. Oprah is on. I don’t know what the topic is. Oprah has just walked over to a table, and she is pointing to a real uterus that sits on the counter. She’s talking about the size. It looks so small, shriveled up. I touch my stomach, get up, and turn off the TV.
Falling onto my bed, I lie there for hours.
The telephone rings. I listen to it ring and ring and ring. I forgot to turn on the answering machine. I know I need to get the phone, probably my mom, probably worried. Instead I turn on the answering machine. The minute it’s on, the phone rings again. Third ring, then my mother’s voice: “Thair, are you home yet?” I can hear panic. I’m a grown woman, but I still need to check in with Mom. “Honey, call me.” She is about ready to hang up, silence, and then she continues, “Honey … are you in the shower? Can you hear me? Call me. I want to know that you are home safe and sound. You know, I could have picked you up! You didn’t have to spend money on a shuttle! And I want to see you … okay, okay, call me. Love you, baby.”
13
Rancho Fierno, California December 24th, 2000
I am driving to suburbia hell for the first time since I got back from Greece. My mom visits me every weekend for a coffee, a lunch, or an over-nighter, but it is she who always comes to me. She drives to the coast. I hate being inland. I haven’t told her anything about my trip, and she hasn’t asked. She did make a comment that it must have been hard for me to be there without my yiayia, and I just nodded. There is so much more to it; I just could never tell her.
Since I have been back, I have been questioning my sexuality. Am I a lesbian? Is this why I have always been searching? I don’t feel like a lesbian; in fact, lately I feel absolutely asexual. It’s not like I’m interested in women now. I have no desire to date men or women.
I started teaching a unit on gender studies in my English 200 course. I am curious what young people of today feel about homosexuals … bisexuals. Most students love to talk about anything that has to do with sex, but so many have surprisingly strong feelings regarding gay rights. A military man in one of my classes stayed after to tell me that he was dropping because he found the content of my course “disgusting.” For the first time in my life, I felt personally attacked for my sexuality, like I had a dirty little secret. But my experience wasn’t dirty. So I smiled curtly and said, “Where is your drop card? I will happily sign it.” He grimaced and said something under his breath about all these college classes getting corrupted by all these liberals. I could feel the blood rush to my face, making my cheeks bright red.
Today I am not thinking about all this, though. I am just thinking that it’s nice to be with my mama. Sometimes she drives me nuts, but today I am thriving on her company. She’s setting the table for two. Just for her and me. A whole turkey sits between us, sweet potatoes, green beans with Durkee French-fried onions—very American—and a Greek salad on the side. The tomatoes in the salad aren’t red, instead an awful pink color. And tasteless.
“Mom, I want to ask you something,”
“Yes, honey.”
“I remember when I was in my twenties, you told me, and I don’t remember why, that you never really loved Dad … is that true?”
“Thair, I’m sorry. I should never have told you that. I did care for your father, but ‘love,’ that’s something else entirely.” She pauses. I lean into her story, waiting, “Well, there was a boy … in Athens, from my high school. We dated for about a year before I met your father. He was kind-hearted. But I thought he wasn’t good enough, couldn’t take me where I wanted to go.”
“Where did you want to go?”
She stops, pokes the turkey, looks down as if she is traveling down a dark wormhole, then looks at me directly in my eyes and says, “I don’t know. Gosh, I don’t know.”
I swallow my food hard. She looks down again and adjusts herself in her chair. “What was the boy’s name, Mama?”
A smile crosses her face. “Georgios. He was from a poor family. We saw each other mostly at school and at beach parties. In those days we would gather at the beach, someone would bring a radio or a guitar, and we would sing and dance with the light of the stars.”
“Mama, I want to ask you something personal, okay?”
“Okay …”
“Were you a virgin when you married Dad?”
She doesn’t blush. She looks up blankly, “Yes. I was.”
I want to ask her more. Her eyes glistening, “Thair, I was really young. I made a lot of mistakes. But I am happy that I married your father. I have you. You have the same nose as him, the same inquisitive green eyes, the same drive. He is an intelligent man; he was just … I don’t really know …
some of the things he did were not good. Too much money and power make men do stupid things. But I always believed he had a good heart.”
I know my mom has dated since her divorce, but there has never been anyone special. One gentleman was a permanent fixture for a few months, but it seemed to end subtly without heartbreak for either.
My mom is still very attractive, petite, with a thick dark bob, and an inviting smile. Her spirit comes to life through her smile. She never complains. Our visits at my place are mostly pleasant. She does continue to pester me about meeting Mr. PerfectMan, says I am too picky, but I just can’t tell her what I am feeling. I don’t even know what I am feeling.
“So what happened with Georgios?”
A wide smile wraps around her head. “He’s fine.”
“He is fine. Mom! You are using present tense! Do you still know him?”
Her eyes shine, “Yes, we are friends.”
“What do you mean FRIENDS?”
“Well, after my divorce, the year I went with you to Greece for the summer, we saw each other again. He had heard from the island’s gossip mill, of course, that I had divorced, so he wanted to see me.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because there’s not much to tell.”
“What do you mean, not much to tell?”
“Well, we decided to meet in Athens, in a café in Plaka. We couldn’t meet in Kythnos.”
My pulse quickens.
“I remember waiting, drinking my coffee, and then a man walked in. I almost didn’t recognize him because he looked so old. He had a beard, all grey, and his body was so … so frail.”
He was dying! I couldn’t believe it. Mom was going to finally find happiness and—damn it—he was dying!
She continues, “But his eyes. Oh, those eyes. They spoke to me the same way, like when I was a girl.”
“What happened?”
“He came over, greeted me, and then we talked about the last twenty-five years.”
“So what was going on?” I try to sound gentle, wondering about his health, but then remember that she had started the conversation saying, ‘he is fine.’ My heart is fluttering. He is alive!
“We talked about our spouses—”
Cutting her off, “He was still married?”
“Yes, but his wife was not well. She had cancer. He loved her very much. I held his hands as he cried; he told me that he didn’t know how he could live without her. Their three children would be devastated. She was only in her early forties.”
“What about you? How did he feel about you?” I know I am being so selfish. The woman was dying, and all I care about is did he still love my mother?
She is just about to continue when the phone rings. She jumps up as if she just got ejected from an F14.
“Hello?” in English first, then switching to Greek: “Yasou!”
A phone call from Greece? No, it can’t be.
She takes the cordless phone and slowly, nonchalantly, walks into her bedroom and closes the door. I can hear her laughing and laughing. I have never heard her so playful. I make my way to the bedroom and, like a child, stick my ear to the door. She opens it suddenly and walks out, shaking her head.
“Hronia Polla, na su zisune … ne, ne k’ego … endaxi, endaxi.” Another set of laughter: “Filakia,” then, she hangs up.
“Mom that was him! Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Tell you what?” she said with a sly look on her face. “Honey, like I said, honestly, there’s really not much to tell.”
A short pause. I stare, eyebrows lifted. Waiting.
“Okay, okay. After Georgios’s wife died, he started calling me on my birthday, at Easter, on Christmas, but, really, that’s it.”
“But Mom, do you love him?” Before she can answer, “Why don’t you move to Greece? Be with the love of your life!”
“Who said he was the love of my life?”
“Okay then, tell me. Please. Tell me about him, about you. I need to know.” What I need to know is who is my mom? What were the reasons for her decisions? Did I really know her story? And if this Georgios wasn’t the love of her life, did she ever have one? And, if not, why?
While these questions pervade my mind, I realize one thing. Are my questions really about me? Am I trying to figure out why I am the way I am? Has she ever been truly happy? Will I ever be happy?
Like an ungrateful child, frustration swells, and an unknown pain fills my gut. My mother’s voice softens, “Honey, again, there’s not much to tell. He is a wonderful man. Now he’s a widower, still lives on Kythnos, and continues to run his restaurant with one of his daughters.”
“But do you love him?”
“Thair, he’s a good man. But I don’t want to live in Greece and surely not on an island. That’s why I left. I got out of there. I don’t want to go back.”
There? She was talking about the place that I adored.
Were her choices really all about a country? Of course, I wrote it that way in “Phaedra’s Story,” but I assumed I had exaggerated my mom’s feelings of “wanting to go to America.” My stories were ultimately fiction, colored with creativity. But could the “Phaedra” in my story really be a closer representation of my mom than what I had imagined?
I pursued with exasperation, “But, Mama, forget Greece and moving, just answer one question: do you love him?”
She finally answered, “No, not that way.”
Damn. So my mother never loved anyone?
“Mama, I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. Did you ever love Georgios?”
“Sure, I loved him, with a wonderful, exciting teenage love. And I enjoy talking to him now. We talk about the beach parties. Elvis. Gidget. Vougiouklaki, Theodorakis … dancing all night long with sand in our toes. But I didn’t, and I don’t want a life with him.”
“So, if you never really loved Dad, you didn’t love Georgios, do you ever feel sad that you have never experienced crazy, amazing, undeniable true love?” If a student had written a list of adjectives like this, I would have put a nice long pencil mark through all the words, but now I need to load my noun. I mean, the noun is Love.
Instead of answering my question, she holds onto another word: “Sad? Why would I feel sad?” She almost laughs but refrains when she looks at me.
“I have a lovely home, good friends, and a daughter who loves me very much, right?” She’s playful and teasing, her mood very different from mine.
“Mother, of course I love you. But is that enough? You are only fifty-four years old. You look great. You have more energy than I do. Don’t you want to be in love?”
“Thair, who doesn’t want to be in love? Yes, it would be nice to have a man in my life, but right now, I can tell you this with all honesty, I love my life. I have no one to answer to. I come and go as I want. I rent a movie, or I read a book. I cook, or I don’t. I see my friends for a coffee, or I have dinner with them. I visit my friends who are also divorced, or I get invited to homes where my friends are surrounded by kids and grandkids. Thair, I can do whatever I want. I have freedom. And that makes me happy.” I know she wants to say more, her voice sounding a bit defensive, but my mind is already wandering. It doesn’t sound liberating to me, sounds kind of lonely. But she does seem to be speaking from the heart, and I do believe her. I just can’t imagine my life without a man. Or without a partner. I am just not so sure about the man part anymore.
I don’t want her life. I want love. I want what she promised me with the story of Zeus. Just like Aristophanes explained: we were cut in two, and I want to find my other half. All that bullshit, and I still believe it. I still want it.
What a softie, my tears can no longer stay behind their walls. As they pour out, my mama takes her hand and puts it on top of mine. “I’m sorry, baby, what’s wrong?” Chest heaving, I am becoming unbearable, even to myself. I can’t articulate my sadness out loud because it is too pathetic. People are starving, diseased, missing limbs, losing children, and
I am unhappy because I haven’t found true love.
I am ready to let the conversation end when my mother surprises me. “Okay, Thair, I will tell you something else … I don’t know how you will take it, but here goes: when your father first bought this house, you were just a baby. At that point, I did want to leave him because I found out I was not the only woman in his life. But, frankly, I had nowhere to go. I would have been a disgrace to Papou. To go back to Greece, divorced and with a baby, I would have been ridiculed, the talk of the town. And what could I have offered you in Athens? We would have lived in a small apartment with my mother and father; instead, you were raised in a beautiful house in the best country in the world. I was able to give you a life that was close to perfect.”
Perfect? She is so wrong. I hated Rancho Fierno. A Truman Show existence with cookie-cutter houses, people perpetually smiling, snobs at school, a sun that shone so consistently that it didn’t seem real, but also a home where vicious fighting forced me into my bedroom, made me go under my putrid pink comforter, and cry myself to sleep. How can I tell her that listening to her scream, then whimper, tore me up inside? How can I tell my dear mama that my life is far from perfect? Especially after all she sacrificed.
Lost in thought, I hear her say, “Thair, I’ll admit, since you are persisting, there’s more. I was happy. I loved my home. I loved my life … but I did love someone.”
“What do you mean loved someone?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
My mind is reeling. Is my mother gay? Did she have a woman lover? If I, a woman who never even thought about women in a sexual way, fell in love with one, then anything seems possible.
“Yes. Please tell me everything.” I take a deep breath.
“Do you remember your father’s colleague, Charles?”
“You mean the British gay man that Dad called ‘Flamer Charles’?” The hideous names my dad called people suddenly became a list in my mind: Jungle Bunny, Wetback, Bra-Burner, Faggot, Flamer …
The Greek Persuasion Page 8
