Sisterhood Everlasting (22 page)

She looked up at the sky. If she was going to reconstruct the steps that had led Tibby to the bottom of the world, she was going to do it without his help.

Bridget forgot until she got into bed in Brian’s guest room that night the thing that was going on in her uterus. She didn’t remember it in a panicky way. She remembered it as an abstraction. And even as an abstraction, it didn’t suit her at all.

She pictured the sure way Brian bathed Bailey and read to her and knew when to put on a new diaper and what she was supposed to eat and wear to bed. She couldn’t imagine knowing or doing any of that. If felt as foreign to her as standing up in front of a college classroom and lecturing on chemistry. She had nothing to say about it.

She wondered if her own mother had felt that way. She could remember how her mother’s face looked when confronted with lacing Bridget’s skates or getting gum out of her hair. It was just too taxing, too foreign, too much. She wondered if that was the way Tibby had felt.

Look up … and see them.

The teaching stars,

beyond worship

and commonplace tongues.

               —Dorothy Dunnett

It was strange for Lena to attempt to dress herself and do her
makeup in an attractive way without calling Effie or Carmen for help, but attempt it Lena did. She piled all her clothes up on her bed and tried on every defensible outfit she could come up with.

In between the navy blue shirtdress and the black and white patterned skirt with the white blouse, she stood still in her underwear. She turned to the mirror and studied her image carefully and honestly, in a way she hadn’t done in a long time. She’d spent a lot of years dressing down, being every quiet and serious thing other than pretty.

“God, your looks are wasted on you,” Effie used to say.

But was that true anymore? Was she even pretty anymore? Was there any point in spending energy pushing away something she didn’t even have?

She stepped closer to the mirror, so close her two eyes became one stretched cyclops eye, and then she stepped back again. She couldn’t tell, honestly. Her hair was still thick and shiny, but was long and shapeless from not having been cut in a couple of years. Her eyes were still that odd pale celery color. If anything, they were getting lighter as she got older. It was hard to say they were pretty, exactly.

She was thinner than she used to be. She was thin by her own standards, by normal people standards, but certainly not by Kate
Moss standards. Not even by the new Carmen Lowell standards. She squinted and felt insecure. She wanted Kostos to think she was pretty. That was about all the use she had for pretty.

This year she’d be thirty. Maybe when she was forty or fifty she’d look back and think,
Why didn’t I enjoy it when I had it? Why did I spend my pretty years in dark clothes looking down at the sidewalk? Why didn’t I wear red or fuchsia and submit to the makeup Effie was always trying to put on me?

Lena trudged back to her closet to look for something red. She had one thing, and she didn’t know if she could bring herself to put her hands on it. It was a red silk dress—or maybe rayon—simple but fitted and kind of short. Tibby and Carmen had bought it for her to wear to her first gallery opening, a group show at Larker, but Lena had chickened out at the last minute and worn brown.

Effie would have had ten things to lend Lena on the spot, and she would have given them generously. They would be big on Lena, but Effie would belt them or pin them in her magical way, and they would transform her. Lena would look ten times prettier and also uncomfortable.

The thought of making peace with Effie felt about like embarking on an Ironman triathlon: absurdly grueling, but Lena knew the steps it would take to accomplish it, even badly. The thought of trying to be close to Carmen again felt more like trying to design a time machine using only the things in her kitchen. She had no idea how to go about it and no faith that such a thing could be done.

Some nights when she lay in bed, she imagined her way through Carmen’s day. Other nights, she went through Bee’s. She could picture them doing the regular things. She could picture Bee pedaling up hills on her bike, buying falafel from a truck parked at the edge of Dolores Park or eating a burrito from Pancho Villa the size of a newborn baby. She pictured Carmen in her trailer parked on the Bowery or Seventh Avenue, in the makeup chair with a cup of coffee in one hand, her script in the other, her iPhone on her lap. She pictured Carmen sweeping into crowded restaurants alongside Jones and his pretentious glasses.

But when she tried to see into their minds, to think their thoughts, she couldn’t. When she tried to imagine how they were
making sense of things, what they might know that she didn’t, how they fit the brutal facts into their lives, what memories they were carrying around, she couldn’t. That exercise had been effortless for most of her life, and now it wasn’t. They seemed almost like strangers to her; she could only see them from the outside.

Bridget was the one she worried about, even from the outside. Bridget was the one with the deepest fault lines. She was the one least able to diagnose or treat her own condition.

As the days passed, there was some robotically maternal part of Lena that couldn’t quite let Bee go. Every few days Lena left a message for Bridget or wrote an email, certain as she did that it was going straight into the digital abyss. But she didn’t know what else to do.

She’d even called Bee’s dad once and left a message. She hadn’t said anything important and wasn’t so surprised he hadn’t called back, but still. Lena thought it was tough having parents who tried too zealously to fix your troubles, but how would it be to have a parent who didn’t even notice them?

When the phone rang on Lena’s desk amid all her packing, she was so surprised that she answered it. She was down to one regular caller, her mother, and Ari had taken to leaving messages on her cellphone, because the mailbox—unlike the one on her home phone—wasn’t full.

“Lena?”

“Yes.”

“Why is it you can’t meet for the next two weeks?” The voice was loud and speaking Greek.

“Eudoxia. Hi.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Where?” Usually they confirmed and occasionally canceled their Wednesday-afternoon coffee by email. They hadn’t spoken on the phone in years.

Lena took a breath. She tried to summon Ann B. Davis playing the sensible
Brady Bunch
maid. In Greek. “To Santorini.”

“You are going back? Why?”

She remembered with some longing the comfort of Eudoxia as a
disembodied Greek-speaking voice on the phone and then Eudoxia as a large, kind, pastry-eating stranger. But Eudoxia was long past being a stranger now. It was frustrating how when people loved you they took an interest in you and sometimes worried about you and personally cared what you did with yourself. Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct and had nothing at all to give.

“I’m going to try to sell my grandparents’ house finally.”

“Oh.” It was a complicated “oh.” Eudoxia wasn’t going to leave it at that.

“I think my dad was pretty happy that I volunteered.”

“I am sure he was. When do you go?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Dear me. And return?”

“I bought an open ticket for the way back. I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

“You don’t mind going back there? After what happened?”

Lena didn’t stop to think how to say these things in Greek, she just said them in Greek. “Of course I do. I mind everything after what happened. I mind being here or being there. I mind thinking about it and not thinking about it. I mind walking and I can’t stand still. I need to do something.”

“Oh, my dear one,” Eudoxia cooed sympathetically.

Lena felt her eyes filling with tears. She thought of Tibby’s mother. “It’s hard for everyone,” she said.

“Do you want me to come with you?”

Lena was stunned, but the way Eudoxia said it made Lena know she meant it. Slowly in Lena’s mind a picture evolved of the two of them trundling through the airports and climbing the steep paths of Oia. “Doxie, you are very kind to offer.”

“I have savings, you know. I could keep you company. I could help sell the house. I know something about real estate. Anatole says I could sell a Bible to the Pope.”

Lena pictured the two of them side by side, hand-delivering Tibby’s letter to Kostos in London. She almost smiled at the
thought. Imagine if Eudoxia met Kostos. Then Lena would never, never hear the end of it.

“The plane leaves early tomorrow morning,” Lena said.

“I can pack quickly. I am a light traveler. You don’t even know that about me.”

The tears in Lena’s eyes spilled over. “I am touched that you offered. I really am. But I can’t take you from Anatole for so long. What would he do? He might starve. He might die of loneliness. And besides, I will be fine. I don’t mind going by myself at all.”

Eudoxia sighed. She was quiet for a few moments. “All right, then. But if you change your mind you can call me anytime tonight. I will be home.”

“Thank you, Doxie. I will.”

“It will be good practice for your Greek.”

Lena hung up the phone and lay down on her bed and cried a puzzling brew of tears. It was probably good you couldn’t flip the love switch, because sometimes it was what you needed, even if you didn’t want it.

“I had an idea,” Brian said to Bridget on her second strange morning in Bowral.

She looked up from the kitchen computer, where she was trying to find a flight back to the States and ruefully facing up to the fact that she had come on a one-way ticket, had made no provision for the future, and had not one single plan for what happened next.

“Well, more like a favor,” he said.

“Okay,” Bridget said. She was in penance mode. She was ready to do a favor.

“You know that software project I told you about.”

“Right.”

“Well, I was wondering if you could give me some help.”

She turned to him. “I don’t really know anything about software,” she began, “but—”

“No.” He sort of smiled. “I was wondering if you could look after Bailey for a few days. So I could work.”

“Oh.” Now she felt embarrassed. She was unused to the feeling.
“Right. Well.” There was no way she was going to come right out and say no to him. “I don’t actually know anything about taking care of kids either. I’m worried I would mess it up.”

“Bee, it’s not like there’s any science to it. Figure she’s like you but wears a diaper and needs to sleep and eat a bit more often.”

Bridget nodded hesitantly, wondering if this statement was strictly informative or if there was an insult in it.

“But if you don’t want to, I understand.”

“No, I will. I’ll do it. I’ll try.” She heard herself agreeing before she’d quite talked herself into it.

“Thanks. It would make a big difference to me,” he said. He looked like he meant it.

“I’m happy to,” she said. It was rare that she spoke dishonestly. She wondered if she looked as diminished as Brian did.

Carmen was standing in the Vera Wang boutique attempting to buy the most expensive wedding dress in New York City when she heard the special ring tone of her agent, Lynn. “Hi, Lynn.”

“Sweetie! I’ve got an unbelievable piece of news. Grantley Arden is casting for his Katrina opus and he wants to meet with you. They’ve already set up the production office in New Orleans. He wants you to go down there and talk to him and a couple of the producers. They’ve already got Matt Damon committed.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No.”

“When?”

“They want to meet next month on the twenty-eighth. That gives you some time. But I think you should go a few days early and get a feel for the place. Have you been?”

“No.”

“Well, you need to go. Listen to the accents, walk around, eat some food, absorb everything you can. It’s a film about the city. You really need to take it in. That’s what Grant kept telling me. I’ll email you the script as soon as I get it.”

“I’m working until March twenty-fourth.”

“So leave as soon as you finish. And plan to stay an extra week in case they want to get you on film or have you meet the studio people. I don’t want you coming home without an offer.”

When Carmen hung up, her heart was pounding. The saleslady wheeled in a rack of dresses, but Carmen couldn’t look at them. How could she think about wedding dresses at a time like this?

Carmen thanked the saleslady and apologized and walked out to the street. She walked up and down Madison Avenue calling every member of her team, and then she called Jones.