Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood 2)

This began a dull pounding inside Lena’s chest. She knew somehow that the woman wasn’t part of his family or a close family friend. She could just tell. Lena stood there, hoping Kostos might wave or beckon her over, or notice her in any way, but he didn’t. She waited alongside her grandma, kissing and shaking hands, and nodding to a lot of heartfelt sentiments she couldn’t specifically understand.

Though his grandparents were among the first to hug and kiss Valia, Kostos waited until almost the very end. The sky had clouded over darkly and the churchyard had emptied by the time he approached, with the blond woman still at his side.

Awkwardly Kostos hugged Grandma, but they said nothing to each other. The blond woman timidly pecked Grandma on the cheek. Lena stared at this unfamiliar woman, and she stared back at Lena. Lena waited for some sort of greeting or introduction, but it didn’t come. Grandma’s mouth made a straight line across her face. Lena felt confused, and slightly panicked at the strangeness on all sides.

The priest, who had hovered kindly throughout the proceedings, seemed to sense the social breakdown. He knew enough English to want to facilitate.

“Kostos, you must know Valia’s son and daughter-in-law from America.” He gestured toward Lena’s parents standing a few feet away. “And Valia’s granddaughter?” He gestured from Kostos to Lena and back again. “Lena, do you know Kostos and his new bride?”

Bride.

The word flew around Lena’s ears like a mosquito, diving and threatening before it bit her. And then it bit her.

She looked at Kostos, and finally, he looked at her. His face was all different. As his eyes met hers, knowing and seeing her at last, her vision began to fuzz at the edges.

Lena sank down to the ground. She put her forehead to her knees. She was vaguely aware of her mother’s worried hands on her back. Dimly she felt Kostos’s alarm as he broke his stiff posture to reach for her. Lena’s basic human instinct made her hang on to consciousness, even though it would have been a blessed relief to let it go.

The bedroom was not big enough to contain her anguish. The house was not big enough. Lena wondered, as she stepped quietly out of the house and started up the darkening road, whether the sky would be able to hold it.

She walked barefoot up the dusty road, not sure of her destination until she got up to the top, to the wide, flat expanse that spread from cliff to cliff. Numbly she set herself in the direction of the little olive grove. It was a place she and Kostos had shared, but she felt sure he had since abandoned it, as he had abandoned everything that was theirs, including her. There were many pointy, spiny things sticking into the bottoms of her tender, suburban feet, but that was okay with her.

When she got to the grove, she hovered by the little olives as though they were her long-lost children. She stepped over the rocks and sat by the side of the pond, much diminished since last summer. The whole island was drier and yellower than it had been then.

This was the place where it had all started. It seemed ceremonial to wash her sore feet and make her good-byes here too.

She thought she’d be finishing it alone, but she heard the crackle of footsteps behind her. Her heart leaped, but not because she thought it was a criminal or a wild boar. She knew who it would be.

He sat next to her, rolled up his funeral pants, and put his feet in the water next to hers.

“You’re married,” she said, flat and numb.

She clamped her jaw before she allowed herself to look at him. He was obviously pained and embarrassed and sorry and blah blah blah. So what.

“She’s pregnant,” he said.

Lena had been prepared to be remote and unmoved, but he had managed to ruin that for her too.

She gaped at him with giant eyes.

He nodded. “Her name is Mariana, and I went out with her three times after you broke up with me. The second time I had sex with her.”

Lena winced.

“I am a stupid bastard.”

She had never heard him sound bitter like this before. She stared at him quietly. She didn’t have very much to add to that.

“She is pregnant and I am at fault. So I am taking responsibility.”

“Do you know it is …” She had trouble finishing the sentence. “… yours?”

He looked at her levelly. “This is not America. This is an old-fashioned place. This is what a gentleman does.”

She remembered when he’d used that word with her. She couldn’t help feeling, somewhat discordantly, that his efforts at being a gentleman were not adding to the overall happiness in his life.

Slowly, looking at the water, Lena tried to reassemble the last few weeks, knowing all this.

“Will you go back to London with her?”

He shook his head. “Not for now. We’ll stay here.”

Lena knew what a blow that was to him. He wanted to get off the island and make a life for himself in a bigger place connected to the bigger world. She knew he had always dreamed of that.

“Do you live together?” she asked.

“Not yet. She is looking for a place in Fira.”

“Do you love her?” Lena asked.

Kostos looked at her. He closed his eyes for a minute or two. “I could never imagine feeling about anyone the way I feel about you.” He opened his eyes to see her. “But I’ll do what I can.”

Lena was going to cry soon. She knew she couldn’t keep this up for long. The reality was catching up fast, hard on her heels, gripping her wrists. She wanted to get away from him before it happened.

She got up to leave, but he took hold of her hands and pulled her to him. With a stifled cry he crowded her to his chest with both arms around her, his mouth on her hair, his breathing rough.

“Lena, if I’ve broken your heart, I’ve broken my own a thousand times worse.” She could hear that he was crying, but she didn’t want to look. “I would do anything I could to change this, but I can’t see a way out.”

She let out an orphan sob, a small release as she struggled to hold the rest of it back.

“I’ll let myself say this now, and not again. It goes against the commitment I made, but Lena, I have to

tell you this. Everything I ever said to you was true and is true. I didn’t lie. It’s truer and bigger and more powerful than you’ll ever know. Remember what I said.”

His voice was desperate. He clutched her, almost too roughly. “You will go along, I know you will. And I will spend my whole life not having you.”

She needed to get away. She pulled herself away from him and hid her face.

“I love you. I’ll never stop,” he promised, just as he had done a few weeks before on the side-walk outside her house.

That time it had been a treasure. This time it was a curse.

She turned and she ran.

Tibby agreed to get a pedicure. She had never pegged herself as a pedicure kind of girl, but her mother had wanted her to come, and it was hard to hate a free foot massage. Plus, as they sat side by side with their feet swirling in miniature Jacuzzis, Tibby realized this was the longest time she’d spent with her mom all summer long. Maybe that was the idea here. Maybe you had to tag along sometimes to get what you needed.

Her mother chose dark red for her toenails. Tibby chose clear. But then she changed her mind and chose dark red too.

“Sweetie, I wanted to show you something,” her mom said, pulling an envelope out of her purse.

She unfolded the letter, handwritten on thick, fancy paper. “It’s from Ari.”

Tibby winced. She thought of Lena, of course, and she also thought of the whole stupid blowup.

“It made me cry,” Alice said, seeming to summon up a bit of wetness in the eyes to demonstrate. Tibby could tell it wasn’t a sad kind of crying.

“Before they left for Greece, she wrote the dearest apology for the whole mess. She’s a sweet person. She always has been.” Alice’s face seemed to grow sentimental, and Tibby suddenly felt sentimental too.

“I remember when you and Ari used to play tennis on Wednesdays against Marly and Christina, and you always took turns winning.”