When Stavros had criticized building a museum to your past, Fern had felt instantly fingered, though he had hardly known her then. Because there it stood sometimes, against her will, an edifice as solid to her as the Met. A great wing, she’s afraid, is devoted to the botched loves of her life, a wing filled with the oldest but most damaged things. Yet her museum contains not just the grievances Stavros railed against, Vesuvian artifacts chipped from treacherous lava and silt, but objects, like silver heirloom ladles, shiny with domestic joy, objects in which you could clearly see your own face. Fern does not think of herself as someone who dwells in the past, yet it does preoccupy her, and no one leaves her more uneasy about that preoccupation than Stavros. She feels as if he has perceived this tendency in her and will be determined to root it out. This is what he offers, and what he threatens.
When it comes to love, there is the timeworn caution that the very qualities you fall for hardest may be those you grow to despise. With Stavros, she wonders if the opposite might hold true: that this quality she nearly fears—his aversion to sanctifying the past—is something for which she will one day be grateful.
When Fenno asked about her husband, she was stunned to realize that she feels as if she is still married to Jonah. It’s guilt, that much is clear, which keeps her from laying the marriage to rest, but perhaps it’s not the guilt she suspected: not guilt because she stopped loving him but guilt at a grandiose doubt that she has so far refused to admit. When she told Fenno how ruthlessly she attacked Jonah, wasn’t she admitting that perhaps he did kill himself after all? That perhaps she dealt the decisive blow to his hope?
By Riverhead, the warm wind and the loud engine of the old bus begin to sedate her. At first she struggles to stay awake, but she realizes there’s little reason she shouldn’t sleep. Fenno doesn’t seem to want much conversation; he’s tired and, he admitted earlier, he has to concentrate when behind the wheel of an American car.
Once she surrenders, she is instantly dreaming, back at last night’s dinner, sitting at the head of the table. But at the far end, beyond the Scottish brothers, Tony, and Richard, sit her own two brothers. Tony is giving a detailed account of how his father was a raging drunk and used to beat his blind, defenseless mother. Sometimes she’d hide in the linen closet when she heard him coming in, Tony is telling them, nearly crying. Fern is stunned and riveted—she’s never heard him talk like this, so openly, with such emotion!—but no one else seems to be paying close attention. She is especially angry at her brothers: Gar is examining the roses, foraging among the petals, rubbing pollen between his fingers and sniffing it; Forest is fidgeting, his boredom too dramatic. “Midwesterners can’t pronounce
nuclear
or
milk,
” he says at one point, and she glares at him; she didn’t hear Tony say either of these words. Adding to her agitation, she knows that, though she can’t see him, Jonah is sitting in the living room, just listening in the dark, and she’s terrified someone at the table will mention that she’s pregnant. As she is about to scold Forest and Gar for their bad manners, Fenno whispers that he has something to show her; could she come out to the kitchen? She wants to hear all of Tony’s story, but Fenno insists. “It’s a matter of months,” he says. But then he leads her to the front porch, not the kitchen. “Look.” He points at the VW bus in the driveway. All the stickers and emblems have been removed, and it’s a different color—a springtime green. It’s unmistakably brand-new, just delivered from the manufacturer. But how is this possible, she’s thinking, when they don’t make this model anymore? She is also surprised that Fenno doesn’t notice he’s been ripped off, that someone’s stolen the bus he borrowed and left this one instead. She’s about to tell him when she spots someone in the driver’s seat, waving. It’s Stavros, but because of reflections on the window, she can’t see his face and has no idea if he’s happy or angry to see her. “How bloody predictable,” she hears Fenno mutter and opens her eyes to realize that these are the words of the real Fenno, not the Fenno in her dream.
A moment after she wakes, so does Dennis. Both of them must have sensed a loss of momentum, for having sped this far without delays, they are nearly in sight of the city when the Long Island Expressway exerts its particular torture: a rude halt stretching for miles without apparent cause.
As Fenno stops the bus, they lose what little relief they had from the heat. Fern notices, down to her right, that the driver of the adjacent car is giving her a thumbs-up. She’s baffled for a moment, then guesses that he’s read the bumper stickers on her side of the bus—but whether he agrees with the notorious Aunt Lucie on her support of greenery, God, or pregnancies carried to full term, Fern has no idea. She gives the man a hasty smile.
Dennis groans. “Oh crikey, the chervil. Your mate Tony told me I could nick a bit of that lovely chervil. I was going to do a chervil-asparagus soup for my class.”
“I can take you to a market where you’ll find it in town,” says Fenno.
“Oh but the freshest stuff—”
“Go back to sleep, Dennis, would you?” says Fenno, but gently. “We could be stuck here an hour and I will not permit you to fray one more nerve than necessary.”
Dennis laughs. “My brother, admiral of the fleet.”
“My brother, the ne’er-do-well stowaway,” Fenno retorts.
Surprisingly, Dennis follows his brother’s orders. Within minutes, he’s snoring in small bursts like a backfiring moped.
Fern regards the sea of traffic before them. “Can I ask a favor? Can I use your phone?”
“Of course,” says Fenno.
It takes Fern a moment to figure out how to turn the thing on; she doesn’t own one of these objects because she hates the notion of becoming a slave to convenience. Maybe this is just another fear she needs to shed.
Her machine picks up at once. The first message is Heather, Friday night: She’s won some Alitalia sweepstakes and is bringing Eli for a romantic Fourth of July weekend at the Plaza. She can’t wait to see Fern, and will she finally get to meet the father of her first nephew? Is there a nursery in the works? She just
loves
decorating. Fern rolls her eyes. Certainly Heather’s known about this trip awhile, as it’s only a week away; what is she, a pregnancy health inspector, to give so little notice? But Fern can’t help feeling a surge of excitement. Not all of Heather’s advice will be unwelcome.
The next message, left an hour later, is the one she’d hoped for. His voice is still a shock. “Where are you? Are you asleep? We’re just through customs, Mom’s getting the car with Dad while I sit with this mountain of luggage—mostly my poor old grandmother’s dishes and linens Mom can’t bear to part with—and I have to see you now. The way Dad drives, we’ll be there in about ten minutes. Expect me, whether you’re sleeping or not.”
Sweat clings to Fern’s cheek where she’s pressing the phone to her ear. The next message was left yesterday morning at nine. “Either you are out like a rock, your phone is off the hook, or you are away. But where could that be? Like, what—you have a life that takes you away from home? What can you be thinking when here I am!” The message ends in laughter, but he is hurt; he’d written her the details of his return.
Silently, Fern begins to cry; where does she stand in the cosmos of cruelty now?
“Are you all right?” Fenno says sharply. Fern realizes that she has one hand at her waist, as if to make amends to the baby inside her. It must look to Fenno as if she’s in physical pain.
She tells him she’s fine as she hears the third message, left just three hours ago. “So I am doing something here that is at least slightly against the law, assuming you won’t prosecute. I am at the office, and I am taking the key to your apartment off the board, and I am going there now to ransack the place and figure out just where you are. Or wait. Or fill the place with flowers. I’m not sure what.” This Stavros sounds no longer playful but determined, on the verge of grim, resigned to news he hadn’t expected but plans to face at once. News there will be, of course. Whatever his reaction, he will not despair or brood. He is, it occurs to her, a man who wakes up happy each day, or gives each day the benefit of the doubt (does it matter if, for a change, Heather approves?). All of a sudden Fern longs to pull Stavros up into her life the way a tornado can pull up a house.
“End, of, messages,” stutters the robot voice she wishes she could evict from her machine. She hands the phone back to Fenno and curses the cars that stretch with such astonishing meekness before them.
She’s not sure how far they’ve crept when Fenno says brightly, “Well here we are.” As if there’d been a break in the traffic, he’s smiling with relief.
“Here we are where?”
On both sides of the dismal highway stand rows of tiny dismal houses, interspersed with a beer outlet, a Dominican travel agency, a pizza parlor without a customer in sight. Fenno points to a sign:
LITTER REMOVAL NEXT 1 MILE
BETTE MIDLER
“The Bette Midler Mile,” says Fenno. “I had a friend who loved this sign and never ceased to find it hugely cheering. And he wasn’t a naturally cheery sort of chap. He was very arch, very critical of just about everything under the sun. But he loved Bette Midler—not her music, he always had to remind you of that, but her spirit, her whole persona. He just loved picturing her right here, with all her ambition, her energy, bent over, bottom in the air, picking up polystyrene cups and wadded napkins and used condoms and takeaway Chinese cartons . . .”
When Fern looks over at Fenno, his eyes shine. It’s easy to guess that the friend is dead, that this is one of many memories of the friend, passed on to her, to anyone, as a way of assuring that Fenno will not lose it.
“I’m sorry, but can I borrow that thing again?” she says.
She fusses with the tiny buttons, gets the number right on the second try. His machine still says, as it has for months, to direct all calls to the office, to his father or their assistant. But it beeps receptively nonetheless. “Stavros? Stavros, it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m stuck in a car at the Bette Midler Mile on the L.I.E. and I’m coming straight back to find you, wherever you are.” She pauses and adds, absurdly, “It’s Fern.” Then she calls herself again and talks pleadingly to her apartment, to Stavros if he’s there. Last, she calls his office.
She sits silently with Fenno’s phone in her lap. He does not reach for it or comment on what he overheard. As inexplicably as it stopped, the traffic moves. Fenno accelerates, and a hot breeze, better than none, blows across their faces.
Fern tries to believe that Stavros has not given up on her and orders herself to be calm. Leaving the last message when he did means that he did not go to church with his father. (Was that rebellious, his first Sunday back, and if so, does it signify the depth of his feelings for her? But no; he will have gone to church every single Sunday on his mother’s island, sure to have a devout population.) Where will she find him? The playground on Horatio Street? Will he be back at his apartment or the office—or is he so hurt that he did not pick up at the sound of her voice? She wilts at the thought of searching for him in this heat.
The city comes into view, both near and distant, haughty as Oz. It looks so sharp—exceptional for summer—that you can see the eyebrows of gleaming sun at the top of the Chrysler Building. A mile closer and they will see the reflections of passing clouds in the Citicorp tower—its only redeeming feature, according to Aaron Byrd. Every time Fern catches sight of the city like this, she feels the same disbelief. That is my
home
. Her spirits rise and sink at once. It is not an easy place to call home, but she is impatient to be there.
Once, over dinner with Stavros, she asked him to describe the islands of his parents’ childhood. He told her they weren’t nearly so glamorous or picturesquely tended as the Greek islands she had seen; the houses were cramped, the beaches were stony, the air often stank of goat. In tiny yards, old cars rusted into not very classical ruins. “On some streets, you’d think you’re in some tacky part of Queens, but that’s not to say they don’t have their beauty,” said Stavros, “and all that sea. I don’t really understand my father’s contempt. But I didn’t grow up there, thinking that’s where I’d live forever. I go there and it’s a novelty. The place is so small that everyone knows who I am and I’m treated like a prince. Who wouldn’t like that?”
Fern nodded and said, “I’ve always wished I could live on an island.”
Stavros looked up from his food and stared at her with bemusement.
“What?” she said, sensing a hint of mockery in his expression.
“You know, it’s always amazed me how many perfectly intelligent people wish for things they already have.”
“What do you mean?”
He touched her hand across the table. “You do live on an island.”
She thought about that for a moment. She wanted to argue that it had no beaches, that the water wasn’t swimmable, that there were too many people, that this wasn’t the kind of island she meant. But then she thought of the Hudson River in fall and spring, the way it could smell like the open sea, splay the light so generously across the city’s upturned face. The sound of gulls; the sense you had, like it or not, of proud isolation.
Mind what you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.
As they clear the tollbooth to the Midtown Tunnel, there is a bout of breathless, aggressive snoring from the backseat. Fern and Fenno laugh. He says, “Listen: would you come over for dinner one night—after the chainsaw departs? With or without this Greek chap whose name I’ve forgotten.”
“Stavros. He’s American,” she says. She feels herself blushing. “Yes, I’d love to—with or without him. We’ll see about that part.”
“That would be lovely,” says Fenno, his eyes on the road as they en-ter the tunnel, swooping down into the dark, defying the weight of a river.
Splinters in the heart, invisibly and erratically painful: this is how Fern has thought of her accumulating sorrows. Impossible to expel or withdraw; if you’re lucky, they slip out on their own. But perhaps they are more like the seeds inside a brightly patterned gourd, beyond germination but essential to the wholeness of the gourd itself. Without breaking its durable, ossified skin, you cannot remove them; sometimes they will clatter about and make themselves known. It’s just the nature of things.