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She thought back to the end of that summer, when she had first met Paul Rodman, Carmen’s stepbrother. Her response to him had taken her by surprise. She had never experienced such an instant physical attraction to anybody—not even Kostos. In Paul’s presence, that first time, she had spun these out-of-character fantasies about what she could mean to him, and he to her. But after he left, she retreated, as was her wont. Her romantic side went back into hiding, and after some time, her timid side took over, timidly, again.
Now when she thought about him she felt ashamed. He was one of the many things she’d been hiding from this year. He was one of the people she’d been avoiding.
In February, she had first heard from Carmen that Paul’s father was sick. She felt awful about it. She had thought about Paul. She had worried for him. But she hadn’t called him, or written, as she’d meant to. She had learned since, from Carmen, that Paul’s father was sicker and would likely not be getting better. She didn’t know what to say to Paul.
She was afraid of his sadness. She was afraid to elicit his feelings. She was also afraid not to. She was afraid she would bring it up, and there would fall that most inept failure between them: total silence.
It wasn’t until this class, this feeling, that she had regained a sense of balance. The time she spent with her charcoal and her fingers and her broad pads of paper and Andrew and Annik and these deep, stabilizing stretches of meditation—it all felt like too big a gift to be received. She would have to work to receive it.
Her heart soared at the sound of the timer indicating the break was over. Back to work. It was amazing how much she could hate and love the very same sound.
And so began the fateful pose.
For starters, it was unfortunate that the door opened in the middle of the pose, when Lena was least able to process what was happening. It was unfortunate that the person who walked through the door was Lena’s father. It was also unfortunate that the door was located near the model stand and that Andrew was oriented in such a way that the first thing you saw, upon bursting through the door in the middle of a pose (which you really weren’t supposed to do), was a very up-close look between Andrew’s legs. It was particularly unfortunate that Lena didn’t recognize all of these unfortunate things in time to soften her father’s experience, but instead unwittingly treated her father to a long stretch of her unabashed fixation upon the glories of Andrew.
When her father started talking, overloud, she came to. He was looming over her. It was a rude transition. It took her a moment to find any words.
“Dad, you are—
“Dad, you didn’t—
“Dad, come on. Let me just—”
She started a lot of other sentences too. The next thing she knew, he had his hand clamped around her arm and was steering her back through the door, turning her forcibly away from Andrew.
Annik appeared in the hall with amazing speed. “What’s going on here?” she asked calmly.
“We are leaving,” Mr. Kaligaris blustered.
“You are?” she asked Lena.
“I’m not,” Lena said faintly.
Mr. Kaligaris exclaimed three or four things in Greek before he turned to English. “I will not have my daughter in this…in this class where you have…in this place where she is—”
Lena could tell her father wouldn’t use the necessary descriptive words in her earshot. When it came down to it, her father was a deeply conservative and old-fashioned man. He’d grown even more so since Bapi’s death. But long before that, he’d been way stricter than any of her friends’ fathers. He never let boys up to the second floor of their house. Not even her lobotomized cousins.
Annik stayed cool. “Mr. Kaligaris, might it help if you and Lena and I sat down for a few minutes and discussed what we are trying to do in this class? You must know that virtually every art program offers—”
“No, it would not,” Mr. Kaligaris broke in. “My daughter is not taking this class. She will not be coming back.”
He pulled Lena through the hall and out onto the sidewalk. He was muttering something about an unexpected meeting and coming to find her to get the car back, and look what he finds!
Lena didn’t manage to pull away until she was standing in the harsh sunshine, dazed and off balance once again.
It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.
—This Is Spinal Tap
How bad could it be?
That was what Carmen asked herself as she fixed Valia a cup of tea first thing when she arrived at the Kaligaris house early Monday afternoon and brought it into the den, where Valia was watching television.
“Awful.” Valia nearly spat when she tried the tea. “Vhat did you put in this?”
“Well, tea.” Carmen was being patient. “And honey.”
“I said sugar.”
“The sugar bowl was empty.”
“Sugar and honey is not the same. American honey you cannot eat.”
“You can if you want,” Carmen began, but realized this was not a diplomatic avenue. “Here, I’ll try again.” She took the teacup back into the kitchen. She located the box of Domino granulated white sugar on the high shelf in the pantry. She refilled the sugar bowl.
While she waited for the water to boil a second time, her mind traveled to September. From a chilly distance she imagined her mom very pregnant. She imagined a baby shower. She imagined her room, filled with expectations for somebody else.
When she used to think about September, she imagined herself arriving at college, meeting her roommate for the first time, unpacking her stuff. Now she could only seem to picture what would be going on in her absence, and in those pictures, it was as though she were dead. Or as though she were the one who hadn’t yet been born.
She used to be able to look forward to college. She had dreamed of Williams for so long. It was one of the best colleges in the country. The place her dad had gone. As agonizing as it was to leave her friends, college was something she’d really wanted. Why couldn’t she want it anymore?
She was angry. She wasn’t angry at the baby, exactly. How could she be? She wasn’t angry at her mother. Well, she sort of was, but that wasn’t the real root of it. She was angry that she couldn’t picture her own life anymore. She was angry that her mother and this baby had somehow stolen her future and plunged her back into the past.
The pressure was building up behind her eyes again. Reflexively she snatched the phone from the wall.
“Hey, it’s me,” she said when Tibby answered.
“You okay?” Tibby asked. It was so nice how a person who loved you could pick up on your mood in three small words.
Carmen could hear Nicky shouting about something in the background. “I guess. How ’bout you?”
“Nicky, could you do that in the other room?” Tibby called, away from the phone. “How’s Valia?” she asked into the phone.
“She’s—”
Suddenly a beeping sound overwhelmed the connection. “Tibby?”
Beep beep. Beeeeeep.
“Hello?”
“Sounds like a modem.” Tibby had to shout over the noise. “It must be from your end.”
Carmen hung up the phone and went into the den. Sure enough, Valia had moved from the TV to the desk and was steering the computer’s mouse like a race car. Carmen watched in surprise as Valia expertly negotiated her way through a series of menus into a rapid instant messaging conversation. Presumably with somebody in Greece, considering that Carmen couldn’t read a single letter. She was used to the look of the Greek letters from all her years in the Kaligaris household, but she couldn’t tell you what sounds any of them made.
