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Sometimes she would sink so deeply into her mind—no particular thoughts, no particular narrative, just mud and murk—that it would take her a bewilderingly long time to remember where she was and why. It was almost like she was falling asleep and waking up so many times a day, forgetting and remembering, that she was starting to live in between.
The phone rang and she picked it up. It was the woman from the coroner’s office again. The woman talked rapidly about paperwork and signatures and schedules, and though Lena listened as carefully as she could, she kept getting lost. She heard the words and knew the words and forgot them and tried to remember them, and by then the woman had already leapt ahead by dozens more words.
Over the past few days, Lena had tried, she really had. She knew the Rollinses, Bridget, and Carmen were counting on her. It was her place where this had happened. But her Greek wasn’t up to it. She wasn’t up to it. It was possible her brain wouldn’t process what had happened in any language.
“Do you understand? Do you understand?” the woman kept saying.
Lena held the phone with both hands. “I really don’t,” she said.
Lena found the number through the operator and called it that afternoon. Once she thought of it, she didn’t hesitate. It was a local number, picked up by voice mail after a few rings.
She listened to his voice, his outgoing message, which was in Greek. “Kostos, this is Lena Kaligaris,” she said in English, in a voice she hardly recognized. “I am in Santorini and I’m sorry to bother you, but if you are in town I need your help. Please call me at my grandparents’ house if you get this message.” She left the number in case he had forgotten it.
She hung up the phone. Her heart kept on with its same heavy thud. She listened for the sounds of Carmen’s and Bee’s footsteps even though they were gone and had been since that morning.
They hadn’t been able to look at one another to say goodbye. Between them was a seething, putrid mess of blame and fear and recrimination: What have we done? How did we let this happen? What did you know? What did I know? What didn’t you tell me? What didn’t I tell myself?
They had let Tibby slip away from them into complete darkness and not even known.
What does this mean about us? Who are we now? Who have we become?
When Bridget called Eric from the airport in Athens to let him know when she was getting in, he told her he’d take the afternoon off work to pick her up from the airport and to spend some time with her. She landed at SFO and saw his anxious face the moment she passed through the doors from the terminal into the baggage claim.
He took her in his arms right away. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured in her ear. He rocked her, saying it over and over.
But no matter how many times he said it, no matter how much she knew he meant it, the words stirred around in her ear but didn’t get into her brain. Sometimes he could comfort her. Sometimes he said what she needed, but today he couldn’t reach her. Nothing could.
She stared out the car window on the way home. She watched the brown hills, wondering when they would be green again. Eric didn’t try to make her talk.
As they headed into the Mission she experienced a stretch of time when she couldn’t remember where she lived. She kept picturing the place they’d had when Eric had first moved out here, when they’d first moved in together, the little place on Oak Street. She couldn’t remember anything of what her life was after that.
When she stepped into the apartment, it didn’t seem to belong to her, though she’d picked it—even forced Eric into it. She saw that Eric had laid the table with things she loved: a black bean burrito from Pancho’s, a sliced ripe avocado, a bowl of cubed mango, a plate of oatmeal cookies, and a pitcher of lemonade made with seltzer. She turned to him and thanked him by putting her arms around him. She was grateful, she really was. Even if none of it seemed to relate to her anymore. Even if she couldn’t eat any of it.
“Okay, here’s the big surprise,” he announced, throwing open the bedroom door.
Bridget stared into the little room in disbelief. There was a bed. A big wooden four-poster job riding high with its box spring and mattress, its fluffy comforter and pile of pillows.
“Brand-new sheets and everything,” Eric declared proudly. He walked toward it and she followed, slowly.
“I realized we’ve never had a bed,” he said, admiring it, patting it with his open hand. “We always sleep on a mattress on the floor or a futon or something. I feel like it’s time for us to have a real bed, you know? I took a while picking it out. There were a lot of different kinds. I hope you like it.”
He turned to look at her. She couldn’t say anything. She sat on the floor in the doorway and burst into tears.
“Bee, what?” Eric asked, kneeling down next to her. “What is it?”
She couldn’t catch her breath. He put his arms around her, but she couldn’t settle her gasping.
“Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I—I don’t want that b-bed,” she sobbed.
“Why not? What’s wrong with it? I thought you’d like it.”
She looked up at it. “It’s n-not a b-bad bed. B-but do you have any i-idea—” She stopped and again she tried to catch her breath. “H-how hard it will be to m-move?”
“I don’t want to move. I want to stay here. I want to settle down with you. I can take care of you, Bee.”
She felt
like her lungs had turned inside out. They wouldn’t fill with air. It was urgent, what she felt, but she couldn’t explain it. She could never make him understand.
Lena believed it was the afternoon after the day Carmen and Bridget had left for the airport. She calculated it was the day after she’d spoken to the coroner and left a message for Kostos. She’d sat for a long time at the kitchen table and then she lay on the couch in the dark while some amount of time passed. It was probably the next day, but an extra day could have slouched away and a new day could have slipped under the door, and she might not have noticed it.
She believed, though, it was the day after they’d left that Kostos arrived.
She heard the knock on the door, and she gathered herself up off the couch and opened it. She didn’t expect it would be him. She didn’t expect it would be anybody. It used to be that a knock on the door indicated someone was almost definitely there, but just as time had gone haywire, her mind had shrunken away from most matters of cause and effect. Occurrences just kind of bubbled up in front of her eyes and either stayed there for a while or disappeared again. The occurrence, in this case, was Kostos.
He opened his arms to her, and she walked into them. He wrapped her tightly and she felt her face pressing into his cotton shirt. The smell in his collar was very familiar. He’d somehow fallen back down into the world where she lived. She sensed the emotions, the surprise and strangeness of this, but she couldn’t quite feel them.
“Come in,” she said, and she led the way to the couch. She’d forgotten how dark it was, that all the shutters were closed, until he was sitting next to her and she couldn’t see his face.
“I guess it’s dark in here,” she said wanly, walking to a front window and unlatching it. The sunshine crashed through, more of it than had been invited.
His face was sad, she realized. He picked up her hand and held it. She thought to ask him what was wrong. She was confused, forgetting where she was again. And then she remembered. On the whole, forgetting was easier, but it never stayed away long.
