Traveling With Pomegranates Page 6

  I must have looked at her quizzically.

  “St. Philothei’s bones.”

  “Oh.” I shake my head.

  “They’re over there,” she tells me and points to a silver reliquary on the altar.

  We stand beside it and stare at the bones. We stand with our shoulders touching, without saying anything, and I can think of nothing now but Ann.

  I have one of those stabbing, crystalline moments when it’s as if I’m outside of myself, observing. I see myself almost fifty and my daughter unrecognizably grown, and I wonder: How did this happen? Where did all the time go? Where did we go—those other selves? Then the moment passes and I’m back, staring again at the bones, these tiny sticks of enduring.

  Ann

  Restaurant-Athens

  The hotel concierge recommends a restaurant in the Plaka. He writes the name on a piece of paper bearing a watermark of the Grande Bretagne and tears it off the tablet.

  “We need good directions,” I tell him. “We’ve been lost in the Plaka once today.”

  “All the streets there look alike,” he says and pulls a map from behind the desk. Using a yellow highlighter, he draws a spiraling path from our hotel to the restaurant.

  “The yellow brick road,” I say. For no apparent reason.

  “The road isn’t brick,” he explains.

  Mom smiles.

  “Right,” I say, deciding to stop while I’m not ahead.

  “There is music and dancing,” he informs us as he marks the destination with a big star.

  “Oz,” Mom says.

  I give her a look that says very funny, as the concierge hands her the map. Everything on her face—mouth, eyes, eyebrows, especially her eyebrows—turns up as she looks at it, and I know she’s thinking this is a great way to spend the evening: music and dancing, a real Greek experience. She’s right; it’s a tradition that goes back centuries and there’s nothing more Greek than dancing—but I feel the wary beginnings of a stomachache.

  We follow the swath of yellow on the map until Mom stops suddenly on the sidewalk. I’m already a few paces ahead of her when I hear her say, “Look, this is the same store. And it’s open.” When I turn back, she’s pointing into the window at glass pomegranates in a bird’s nest. We’d passed by them earlier today, but the shop was closed.

  The place sells just about everything: key chains, worry beads, Byzantine icons, Zeus beach towels, miniature statues of the Olympian family members. Mom goes over to the nest and plucks out a pomegranate. It has an eye on top to slip a chain through. On the bottom, the glass is fluted out like the knotted end of a tiny red balloon.

  I learned about Persephone and the pomegranate reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology in middle school. As I recall, it boiled down to three things: Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds that Hades offered her in the underworld; this guaranteed she and her mother would be separated a third of every year; and that was how winter came into the world.

  “I’m going to buy a pomegranate for each of us,” Mom announces.

  “Thanks,” I say, but frankly I’m wondering, why pomegranates?

  At the register, Mom fingers through the colorful bills in her wallet—cream, aqua, and orange. Our new charms cost 1900 drachmas, about seven or eight American dollars. I pull out several hundred-drachma bills, but Mom tells me to save my money for something else. As I slide the money back, I notice the lavender-tinted Athena on one of the bills, wearing her plumed helmet. In Greece, she is everywhere. At home, with the exception of my left ring finger, she is nowhere to be found.

  I dreamed about her once. She emerged from a dark nowhere, a distant black hole in the universe, growing bigger and closer until she was right beside me. She wore a robe that was lit with actual stars from the cosmos. “You can see me anytime you want,” she said. “All you have to do is dream.” Then she was gone. It was one part divine, one part Everly Brothers. That was over a year ago; I hadn’t been able to conjure her again.

  I’ve been reading about her, though. I think for a moment about her unusual birth story, how she emerged fully grown from her father Zeus’s head. It’s interpreted as having cut Athena off from her feminine roots. She’s described as a “father’s daughter” who portrays masculine traits. But I think of Athena’s qualities of bravery and autonomy, even her warrior energy, as inherently feminine, right along with her wisdom and creativity. I always return to the idea of her virginity, how it symbolizes self-belonging. I believe the possibility of that exists in a woman. It’s the territory I keep trying to define for myself.

  I wander through the shop, inspecting the T-shirts displayed on the wall, thinking I’ll buy one for Scott. I try to picture what he’s doing right now. Probably tracking tropical storms, looking for the beach with the best surfing. He has promised to teach me to surf one day. Scott has a way of pulling me into the Wide World of Sports . . . and maybe into the wide world itself.

  I spot a T-shirt with Aphrodite laid out like a fish on ice, completely naked. “Why not just put some bunny ears on her?” I say to my mom, who looks at the shirt and rolls her eyes. I pick a blue one with HELLAS printed in white letters.

  As the clerk rings it up, Mom hands me a small plastic bag with my pomegranate inside. I watch as she takes off the silver chain around her neck and slips her pomegranate onto it. Her chain already has a bee charm on it. I’m not sure what the bee is about, but it’s not unusual for my mother to find inspiration in nature. At the moment, I’m not wearing a necklace so I slip my pomegranate inside my shoulder bag along with Scott’s shirt.

  A block later, we stop again so I can sign a petition requesting that the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. I write my name and where I live into the thickly bound book sitting on a wooden stand on the sidewalk, then glance at the addresses of the other names recorded on the page: Frankfurt, Barcelona, Houston. Now, Charleston. I love the place, but I walk the rest of the way trying not to think about how I ended up there.

  I spot a body shop with rolling garage doors, then across the street, a restaurant. Mom points at it. “That’s the one.”

  “I don’t believe it. I’ve been to that restaurant before!”

  “No kidding,” Mom says, sounding surprised.

  How is it possible that in a city the size of Athens we’ve come to the very restaurant I ate in when I was here before? It’s so unlikely it feels almost purposeful, and for a few seconds I have the feeling I will walk inside and bump into the ghost of myself seventeen months ago—the girl who came to Greece and figured out how to belong to herself and feel at home in the world. The doorway is low. Mom and I duck our heads as we slip into a waiting area the size of a walk-in closet. Yes, the same place.

  “Is this where you danced with . . . what’s his name?” Mom says.

  “Demetri.” I’m slightly embarrassed that she’s brought him up. “I met him somewhere else,” I explain. “This is where Dr. Gergel brought a few of us on the first night we were in Athens.”

  I’d told Mom about Demetri before we left home. I had to—in the last letters that Demetri and I exchanged, we had arranged to meet during the trip. The plan is for him to call me tomorrow afternoon at the hotel and for us to go back to the place we met. The name of that place is about the only detail from my first trip that I can’t remember. It’s not like me to forget, and it drives me crazy because that was one of the happiest nights of my life.

  “Maybe we’ll dance again,” Demetri had written. Maybe we will, but it won’t be in the same way. We may have started with a romance, but now there is Scott. Through our letters, through time and distance, Demetri and I are developing a friendship. That is all our relationship can ever be.

  I keep indulging in the hope that being in Greece, and only that, will solve everything for me. Even when I woke this morning, before I opened my eyes, I lay in bed luxuriating in that particular fantasy. I’m going to walk out of the hotel lobby onto the sidewalks of Athens and that alone is going to make me happy.
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  There’s relief in moments like those, but when they’re gone I always return to my New Normal—a state of semiterror at the thought of failing, looking stupid, getting hurt, or being rejected. For me, normality has become the act of retreat, of being afraid the world will find me and slip like smoke beneath the door. All of which fills me with sadness that I’m missing out on my own life. I know girls from my graduating class who are starting new jobs, MBA programs, law school; girls with five-year plans; girls who want to take on the world. Post-rejection letter, I’ve preferred hiding in plain view, like one of those insects camouflaged as a stick.

  A man greets us, holding an armful of menus. “Yassas, kalispera!”

  His name, Yiannis, is embroidered in red thread on the front pocket of his shirt. We follow him into the dining room where a band is playing “Lara’s Theme” from Doctor Zhivago. It is just as I remember: The stage with the oversized painting of the Parthenon hanging behind it. Long, narrow tables, plates of cucumber, tomato, feta, bowls of tzatziki, platters of chicken souvlaki, moussaka, shish kebabs, black olives. Wine the color of dark cherries. Pastry drowned in honey. I have lost all direction for my life, but I have not lost my appetite.

  Yiannis leads us to two seats directly in front of the stage, then hops up to the microphone to introduce the next performer. A heavyset woman wearing a blue sequined gown with tassels on her shoulders walks into the spotlight and sings a song that seems to be about losing someone and hoping he’ll come back.

  She is followed by a belly dancer with a sword. Her outfit is a shimmery bra and a sheer purple skirt that falls to her ankles with slits cut to her hips. Her spine is an octopus tentacle. When she balances the sword on a spot above her belly button, I think to myself, I could never be this woman. Finally, the room explodes with lively Greek music. Everyone claps. Some stomp their feet. Men shout and let out long, curling whistles. Women roll their shoulders and snap their fingers over their heads.

  Our food arrives just after the band takes a break. Mom and I have barely spoken, but I really think it’s because the party has been so loud. I stab a piece of the pork souvlaki on her plate and she spoons tzatziki from mine. “You can’t have too much of this,” she says, spreading the yogurt sauce onto a piece of pita, and in this uncomplicated exchange I think I might tell her everything.

  I want to say: Did you know that Dr. Gergel asked me if I wanted her to find out why my application to graduate school was turned down and that I said no? I don’t want to know the reasons because the reasons are my defects. And did you know she suggested I reapply? But how do you go through getting turned down by the same school twice? There are other ancient history programs out there, but I haven’t looked into them. What are the odds of another program accepting me if the first one didn’t? It’s as if the rejection letter has uncovered a terrible truth about myself that I didn’t know, don’t want to know.

  I glance at my mother unable to form any of this into words.

  I haven’t done the things Dr. Gergel suggested because I’m afraid—okay, I gave up. I tell myself that studying ancient Greek history in graduate school is my road-not-taken thing, so get over it. But there have been times lately when I’ve asked myself: Is a person meant to do only one thing in this life? What if I leapt at that road too fast? Should my love of Greece translate into a career? And if not, what do I do with that love? I don’t know where this devil’s advocate voice comes from or why I wonder about these things when I still feel so attached to the dream.

  Mom reaches for the carafe of water, fills her glass and then mine. And another thing, I want to tell her, it was a big mistake for me to enroll in graduate school in American history, but I didn’t know what else to do, and I had to do something.

  I don’t say any of that either.

  There’s nothing in our history to make me believe my mother would respond to me as if I were a disappointment. She didn’t do it when I was ten and quit piano. And not when I forfeited a full college scholarship my freshman year to transfer to the school I’d really wanted to go to all along. My heart starts to jog the second I think about the school switch.

  I had been miserable that first semester of college, but I’d stifled that, too. For four months. How do you tell your parents you want to give up a four-year academic scholarship worth a zillion dollars in pursuit of your own unreasoned happiness? At the end of Christmas break, Mom found me sitting on my bed next to my open suitcase, crying. That’s when I finally told her, explaining the obvious—that what I wanted was selfish and insensible. She surprised me by saying the sensible thing would be listening to my heart. Within two weeks I was enrolled at Columbia College, the school I had wanted to attend.

  This was so like my mother. She had a generous spirit, but it wasn’t only that. It was the respect she had for feelings, how she believed it was inimical to the soul to deny them. I’ve watched her follow her own heart countless times in her life, most recently when she convinced Dad they should leave their home of twenty-two years and move to Charleston. I feel a little cheated out of that gene.

  I turn and look at her, wondering what I’m so afraid of now. “What?” she says. “What is it?”

  The music kicks up again and I shake my head. “Nothing,” I mouth.

  Six dancers—three men and three women—move across the stage, holding hands and forming a circle. The men wear foustanellas with white wool tights underneath, sashes, vests, and red clogs with big black pom-poms on the toes. They take turns leaping into the air from a crouching position, kicking one leg and slapping their ankles. Each time, the crowd shouts, “Hey!”

  This is the men’s show.

  Suddenly the dancers fan out into the dining room. My stomachache returns. I know what is about to happen—audience participation.

  One of the female dancers pulls a man, who looks about seventy-five, out of his chair onto the stage. He makes a small show of resisting, then throws up his hands in a what-the-hell gesture.

  Everyone laughs. The troupe pulls others from their seats—a teenage girl, a forty-something man. I hold my camera up to my face and stare at the scene through the tiny glass square. Then the square goes black. I lower the camera to find one of the dancers leaning over me, holding out his hand. He is asking me to join the others.

  It’s as if my fear of this very thing has turned on me and summoned him over. His face is sweating. He smiles at me.

  I can’t move. I want to want to.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  He looks at me like no one has ever turned him down before.

  It’s not you, it’s me, I want to tell him.

  He moves on to another girl with long brown hair. I pick up my camera. Through the lens I watch this girl take his hand and follow him to the stage. She studies the dancers’ feet, stepping left when she should go right, laughing at herself. I think maybe she is the ghost of me seventeen months ago, that she’s here after all. But, sadly, I don’t think I could be this woman either.

  God, I’m draperies again.

  “You didn’t want to dance with him?” Mom asks. Her tone matches the expression I saw on his face. It has a slight “that’s too bad” ring to it. I taste the tanginess of pennies and realize I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek. It is actually bleeding a little.

  “Not really,” I say, shrugging it off.

  I can tell she’s worked up about me. I’m worried she might ask me what’s wrong and I’ll have to lie, or worse, tell her the truth.

  When the dance ends, I muster all the energy I have just to clap my hands.

  We take a taxi back to the hotel. In the backseat I can see the Acropolis lit up, the Parthenon floating at the top. I reach inside my bag for the room key and feel the small lump of the glass pomegranate.

  The Parthenon slips out of view and I’m left staring at my reflection in the window. I look like a girl, once wild, who’s been utterly tamed.

  Sue

  Sanctuary of Demeter-Eleusis

  Last n
ight, we ended up at a restaurant that Ann had gone to on her first trip to Greece, a considerable coincidence that seemed to excite her at first, but as the evening wore on and the Greek dancing grew more delirious, I could feel her retreating to some unreachable place. I had the impression it had to do with her being in the same restaurant again, with the overlap of then and now, but I could make no sense of that.

  She remained quiet all the way back to the hotel, staring through the car window seemingly at nothing. “You okay?” I asked, hoping I did not sound like a broken record.

  “Just tired,” she said.

  Now, this morning, she stands on the sidewalk outside the hotel with guidebooks and camera, appearing refreshed and eager, but something is off. I feel it.

  Our taxi pulls up at 10:15—the same white Mercedes that rescued us from the heat a couple of days earlier. I read the driver’s name on the card I’d saved. Alexander. From the moment I stumbled into the myth of Demeter and Persephone in the museum, I knew we would have to make this trip, but when I tell him we want to go to Elefsina, the modern-day name for Eleusis, he balks.

  “I can take you anywhere in Athens,” he tells us. “Olympic stadium, the Agora, the statue of Harry Truman. We will go up the Hill of the Muses. You can see everything from there.”

  “But we really want to go to Elefsina,” I say.

  He is not impressed with our sightseeing skills. From the driver’s seat, he twists around to face us. “It is twenty kilometers. There is nothing much to see.”

  “But there’s the Sanctuary of Demeter. And the museum—”

  He shakes his head and turns to stare over the steering wheel, as if waiting for us to remove ourselves.

  It occurs to me no taxi will take us there, that we will not get to Eleusis at all. I offer Alexander more money. He politely refuses. As Ann and I open the doors to climb out of the car, he watches us in the rearview mirror, noticing the newly bought pendants that dangle from chains around our necks.