The little girl pulls me by the hand. We clamber upstairs and she takes me straight to her room. She’s even messier than I am, there are things scattered everywhere: pieces from board games, stuffed animals, clothes, hair bands, broken pastels, lumps of plasticine.
“This is my cave!” she says, pulling me down to peer into the space between her bed and her desk. She’s padded it with a blanket and put her teddy bears in there, and a tea set in one corner. Directly opposite is a heap of sweaters, piled into a woolen barricade.
“With all this thunder and lighting, we have to keep warm, see?”
“I see.”
“Do you want some tea?”
Anna finds us in her daughter’s cave. We’re sitting cross-legged, sipping non-existent tea from cups the size of thimbles.
“Come on out,” she says to me. “You’re a grown-up now.”
Well, not so grown up. Not too big for a child’s cave.
Anna insists on my staying to meet Malouhos.
“Yes, yes!” Daphne says, hanging from my forearm.
“Another time.”
“How about another martini?”
“Anna, really! We’ve already had two.”
“You mean you can’t count to three?”
She’s giving me the evil eye. I remember that look well. All those years of psychoanalysis didn’t do a thing for her. When Anna wants something, there’s no messing with her.
“Okay, fine, one for the road.”
Their refrigerator has an ice maker. From across the room, with the shaker in her hand, Anna looks like some carefree housewife from a commercial. Self-sufficient, charming, a barefoot woman in jeans who’s discovered the meaning of life in the circular movement of a cocktail shaker. And the olive, too: it sinks and rises back to the surface, hovering there in a region of transparent meaning. That’s it, I’m drunk.
Anna goes upstairs to put Daphne to bed and for a little while I’m enveloped in the solitude of their vast living room. The space throbs around me like a huge, white, sanitized heart. I rest my cheeks in my palms, start to make plans: I’ll go away, I’ll disappear and cover my tracks so she won’t ever find me. I’ll quit my job. I’ll go to live in some other country, as far from here as possible. Anna was always a harmful presence in my life, I have to free myself from her influence. She can’t come and go whenever she pleases, completely destroy me, shake me up the way she shook up our drinks.
She comes down the stairs like a Hollywood star, hips swaying, cigarette clinging to her lips. She has an incredible mouth, there’s no doubt about that. But it borders on brazen, too, as if she’s constantly offering herself to anyone and everyone who comes along. She’s changed into a robe. She points at the logo of a horse embroidered on the chest.
“See? That makes all the difference.”
My plan to run away makes me more tolerant than I might otherwise be. “If you say so,” I respond. But that just annoys her. She wants me to disagree so she can convince me bit by bit.
“You think I’ve lost it, don’t you?”
“You’re eccentric, you always were.”
“I’m exploiting capital, Maria. It’s what I always do. It’s what I know how to do best. I can live without any money at all. Do you doubt me on that?”
She picks up an empty crystal vase from the coffee table.
“Look at this. Such a simple design, yet so expensive! Just look what money can buy. Where did the materials come from? How was it made? By whom? How different are those people’s lives from your own?”
She opens her hands in a theatrical gesture, and the vase drops to the floor and breaks into a thousand pieces. A shard of glass sticks into her calf. She picks it out, licks a finger and wipes away the blood, casting an uneasy glance my way. She apparently still remembers my fear of blood. Though ever since I figured out the reason behind that fear, it’s not so bad. Just a brief spike in my pulse, that’s all.
I drain the last of my martini, sink my teeth into the olive. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand? I enjoyed that. It’s been too long since I broke something.”
“So you married him?” We’re on our fourth martini and by now I can say whatever comes into my head.
“Stop it, Maria!”
“I mean, in a church?”
She curses theatrically and brings over a photograph album. “Here, if you really need proof. We got married at city hall in the sixth arrondissement. What kind of question is that, if we got married in a church?” As she bends to show me, her robe falls open. She’s got on a matching nightgown underneath.
The album opens to a page that sends shivers down my spine. Is that her father? No, but it looks like him. The same blondish beard and untamed hair. He’s younger than Stamatis and there’s a kind of Olympian calm in his gaze. A compass of a man — you could use him to guide your way.
“What do you think?”
“Malouhos? I’ve got to admit, he’s attractive. .”
Anna at his side, equally attractive, with a fake white fur and pregnant belly. If I’m calculating correctly, the photograph must have been taken just seven or eight months after that thing happened to us, after we parted ways for good. She’s beautifully made up for the ceremony, but if you know her well, you can see the fear in her eyes. The lack of confidence. Perhaps the lack of options, too.
“What about his life before you?”
“Two marriages. Three children. He’ll never leave me, though.”
Of course he’ll never leave. If anyone leaves, it’ll be her.
•
A warm handshake. A bow. Thick, wild eyebrows. And a funny first name: Aristomenis. He’s part ancient Greek, part tired architect in designer jeans. Usually I abhor guys like him. But he has something about him, something to do with his not trying at alclass="underline" he’s just himself, and lets you be yourself, too. He seems modest, quiet. And he smokes a pipe, like Stamatis. He and Anna give one another a quick kiss, he musses her hair, asks after Daphne. They’re a real couple, like my parents. Bound together by so many things.
“I’ve heard so much about you, Maria. Anna has worn my ear out with stories. I’ll tell you over dinner. You’ll stay and eat with us, right?”
“I was just getting ready to leave.” My head is spinning from the martinis, my mind aching with memories. You can’t just dig a hole, Aunt Amalia. It turns out it’s not that easy.
“Where are you going to go, out here in the middle of nowhere? Stay and eat, I made stuffed tomatoes this weekend, with the first tomatoes from our garden. And they’re better as leftovers. Afterward I’ll drop you wherever you need to go.”
“No, I don’t want to put you out. .”
“I’ve got a business drink later, I’ll be going downtown anyhow.”
I ask where the bathroom is. They point to a door under the stairs. I pee for hours, wash my hands. As I’m drying them on the hand towel I catch sight of something familiar in the mirror. A spattering of yellow. Lots of black. Snakes with crowns on their heads, pirogues, women in long skirts with flaming hems. She’s framed my painting, my very first painting!
“Anna, can I talk to you for a second?”
“What is it?”
“Why did you hang this here? You always hated it.”
“I don’t hate it. It’s grown on me over time.”
“Then why did you put it in the bathroom? To humiliate me?”
“Oh, that’s right, works of art belong in the living room, over the sofa. Maria, I don’t even recognize you anymore! The bathroom was always our favorite room.”
Yes, it was, back before you betrayed me. When I could still undress in front of you. Literally and metaphorically.
We chew discretely, silverware barely clinking. Aristomenis — Menis, Anna calls him — laughs loudly and deeply, as if he were gargling. I’d like to be able to call him a stuffed shirt with no personality, I’d like to find some flaw. But I can’t, apart from all the wealth he’s accumulated, and Anna has cast even that in a revolutionary light. As for his stuffed tomatoes, they’re excellent, with parsley and raisins in the stuffing.