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Valia didn’t want to be here. She was going to hate the inauthentic food. She could already hear Valia’s litany of complaints.
You call this food?
Vhat is the green mess? This is not spinach.
As the moments passed, Carmen felt worse and worse. Why did she have such stupid ideas? More than that, why did she actually carry them out?
Valia held the plate up close to her face. She looked like she was going to take a bite, and then she stopped. Carmen watched in wonderment as Valia put it down on the table and bent her head.
Valia just sat like that with her head bent for many long moments, and then Carmen saw the tears. Lines of tears bumped down Valia’s wrinkly face. Carmen felt her own throat constricting. She watched as Valia’s face slowly collapsed into pure sorrow.
Carmen was up and out of her chair. Without thinking, she went to Valia and put her arms around the old lady.
Valia was stiff in Carmen’s arms. Carmen waited to be pushed away, or for some other signal of Valia not wanting to be hugged anymore, especially not by Carmen.
But instead, Valia’s head got heavier as it sank into Carmen’s neck. Carmen felt the soft, saggy skin against her collarbone. She hugged a little harder. She felt Valia’s tears, damp on her neck. She realized, sort of distantly, that Valia’s hand had made its way to her wrist.
How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most.
Carmen tenderly patted Valia’s hair, surprised that for once that it wasn’t she who was acting awful. It wasn’t Carmen who was being needy, but rather feeling needed.
She thought about Mr. Kaligaris and all of his theories about protecting his mother. Yes, smelling Greek food made Valia sad. He was right about that. And being held by another human seemed to make her sad too. But sometimes, Carmen knew, being sad was what you had to do.
“I vant to go home,” Valia croaked into Carmen’s ear.
“I know,” Carmen whispered back, and she understood that Valia wasn’t talking about 1303 Highland Street, Bethesda, Maryland.
“Have fun with Michael.” Bridget lifted her eyebrows suggestively. “But not too much fun.”
As she helped Diana put her duffel bag into her car, Bridget felt a strange rolling sensation under her eyeballs. Her head was aching and she was tired. She was happy for Diana that she was going back to Philadelphia to spend the weekend with her boyfriend, and she was sorry for herself that she was staying here.
She decided against stopping in the dining hall. Friday night dinner was one of the better meals, involving an ice cream sundae buffet where she was always happy to return for seconds and thirds. But tonight she wasn’t hungry. “I gotta go to bed,” she muttered to herself, trudging through the parking lot and past the equipment sheds.
The camp felt strangely empty. It was middle weekend, so the vast majority of campers went home. Only about a quarter of the staff remained to keep an eye on things.
As she pulled off her clothes and crawled under her covers, Bridget was grateful that her cabin was quiet for once. She bundled herself up as tight as she could. It was at least eighty degrees outside; why was she so cold? The tighter she bundled, the colder she felt. She was shaking. Her teeth were chattering. The more she focused on it and tried to stop, the more they chattered and clacked. Her cheeks burned.
She was getting a fever, she concluded. She meant to do something about this. Maybe she could steal a couple of Advil from Katie. She kept imagining herself doing this, without actually doing it. She passed, gradually, into a state between awake and asleep. She imagined getting another blanket. She imagined drinking a glass of water. She could not figure out whether she was doing it or not. She puzzled and tortured her brain trying to figure out what was and wasn’t real. She must have drifted like that for a long time, because it was dark when she was startled by the presence of somebody next to her.
“Bee?”
She tried to orient herself. It was Eric’s face, floating near hers.
“Hi,” she said softly. She didn’t want to pull the blankets from around her chin, because she hated the idea of a draft reaching her hot skin.
“Are you okay?
“I’m okay,” she said. Her teeth were chattering again.
He looked worried. He pressed his hand to her forehead. “God, you’re hot.”
She meant to laugh and make a joke about this, but she couldn’t summon it. She was too tired. “I think I got the flu.”
“You got something.” Tenderly, almost automatically, he pushed her hair back from her forehead. It was so nice, how he did it. She felt strangely cozy and happy inside her fever.
He moved his hand to touch her flushed cheek. His hand felt remarkably cold. “Do you want to take something? Should I see if the nurse is around?” His eyes were fixed on her, full of concern.
“Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal.” Her fatigue made her talk extra slow. “I always run high fevers. My mom used to say”—she had to take a break to work her energy back up—“I’d get to a hundred and six degrees with just a little cold.” She didn’t mean to sound tragic when she said this, but she must’ve, because Eric looked distraught. He knew about her mother. She had told him almost the first time they’d met.
“I’m not sure if the nurse is here, but I’m going to get you something. Do you take Tylenol or Motrin or something like that?”
“Anything,” she said.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere, okay? Promise?”
She coughed up a tiny laugh. “That I can promise.”
“You have to let Valia go home,” Carmen said to Ari, following her into the Kaligarises’ kitchen.
First she’d had to get Lena’s blessing. Then it had taken Carmen two days to get Ari alone in a room, but Carmen was nothing if she wasn’t dogged.
Ari put the mail down on the kitchen counter and turned to Carmen in surprise. “I’m sorry?” Ari’s eyes were large and lovely like Lena’s, but dark and indefinable, where Lena’s were fair, green, and fragile.
“I know it’s none of my business,” Carmen backtracked, “and I know you and Mr. Kaligaris probably don’t want to hear my opinion.” Carmen always called Ari Ari and she always called Mr. Kaligaris Mr. Kaligaris. She couldn’t remember a time when it was different.
Ari nodded slightly, inviting her to pursue that unwanted opinion.
“I really think that you and Mr. Kaligaris should let Valia go back to Greece.” Tears welled in Carmen’s eyes, and she felt so annoyed by her ready-to-wear emotions. “She’s dying here.”
Ari sighed heavily and rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. At least this wasn’t entirely news to her. “How can Valia take care of herself? Especially now, with her knee? Who is going to look out for her if not us?” She didn’t sound like she was voicing her own conviction, but more like she was reciting somebody else’s.
“Her friends? She has her friends, and they are like her family. I can understand that. The only time I’ve ever seen her look happy is when she’s IMing Rena.” Carmen kneaded her hands, sort of amazed to hear herself take on Ari like another adult. “Valia is too depressed to get herself a glass of water, but I swear she could have programmed the computer herself if it meant making a connection to home.”
Ari looked at her, pained and tired, but with tenderness, too.
Couldn’t Ari see that Valia wasn’t the only one suffering? Carmen had never seen Ari so tense, and Mr. Kaligaris hadn’t always been as angry and rigid as he was now. Couldn’t Ari see the toll it took not only on her, but also on her daughters?
Carmen knew she wouldn’t have been able to have this conversation if Mr. Kaligaris were here. But she trusted Ari to love her. Ultim
ately she trusted Ari to read her good intentions and, hopefully, the truth.
“Carmen, sweetheart, I’m not saying you aren’t right. I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But it’s complicated. Really, how can Valia go back to that house she shared with Bapi for fifty-seven years? How could she tolerate the pain of living there without him? Sometimes change is the right thing.”
Carmen couldn’t help looking sour. She was no friend of change. “I know that. I know being back in her house on the island will make her sad. Of course she’ll be sad. But that’s her home. That’s her life. She can handle being sad. I’m sure of that. What she can’t handle is being here.”
There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
—Norman Mailer
