I hoped it didn’t rekindle bad feelings: about Haroula, other loves, a past that was never really past. She was indeed in another conversation. “There are so many ways to be unfaithful,” she continued. “There are so many ways to betray someone.”
We walked through the park, where the keening of the cicadas was almost deafening; they were trapped in their own nightmare. She stopped walking, to listen. “They’re dying,” she said. “That’s why they sing.” She kissed me on both cheeks. “I’m going home now,” she said, and when she disappeared around the corner I had a sickening feeling I would not see her again.
In some way, I was right.
Back in my apartment I detected the faint smell of rose water, like my mother used to wear. I couldn’t look at Nefeli’s paintings. I sat in the living room and tried to read, but found myself turning pages without having taken in a word.
Nearby, someone’s rock band had begun to practice, their piercing guitars filling the courtyard with a Metallica song I remembered from my childhood, which soon transitioned to a heavy metal version of “Evdokia’s Zeibekiko,” which I also remember from my childhood. My mother had wanted to name me Evdokia, after the movie, and my father was incensed because the character was a prostitute. Since the film, no one could have that name without association, he said, though I thought it was a great name, meaning “she whose deeds are good.” Instead, they named me Myrto, and often called me the diminutive, Myroula. When we moved to Chicago, both versions proved difficult for English speakers, and I became Mira. But in Greek, it sounds like the word “fate,” a name that seems to ask for trouble, and my parents rarely used it, and Nefeli never did. Me, I answered to both.
A few mornings later, I went down for my mail. In the foyer next to the mailboxes was a large box inscribed with my name, not shipped but simply dropped off. I opened it up and found several new pairs of lacy underwear in light, springy colors, wrapped in tissue paper; a pile of Greek poetry books translated into English; a stack of old Greek postcards from the 1970s; and a new box of notecards, printed with Nefeli’s early paintings, the kind you’d find in a museum gift shop; and two packages of Thassian olives. She’d opened the box of notecards and used one, of the print that hung in my living room, to write: For Myrto xo N. I called to thank her but she didn’t pick up her phone, so I sent a text: Thank you, dear Nefeli. What is all this for?
She wrote a few hours later. Just a little gift.
•
That night, the garbage strike ended, and when the trucks barreled down the narrow streets of the neighborhood, I stood with Sophia outside her shop. People clapped and cheered and the drivers waved, like a postwar parade. I looked up to the Captain’s front balcony, where he stood watching as well. He waved at us both. “Ah ha,” Sophia said.
Fady began a new cello he’d deliver to a musician in Berlin. He planned to spend some time with friends, working on another sound project, though I knew he wouldn’t be able to leave Rami, who was going with him, right away. The details and the timing were confusing. Fady kept it quiet, and I knew to stop asking, knowing that he’d had to arrange something convoluted and questionable and even that would take a while. Though Rami talked about his brother often, he never said a word about Germany, as if it, and his future there, did not yet exist. Then again, I could not imagine Athens without him, and I, too, didn’t want to see this future, which to me also did not exist.
That day, the building and the courtyard were oddly still. I stood on my balcony. I wondered what the Captain was doing. I knew he was leaving soon, and he seemed to become a little distant, withdrawn, or maybe it was me. I didn’t leave the house for two days. Dimitra texted from Syntagma: there was another parliamentary vote about to happen, but at this point it felt as if the papers could simply have run the last story that appeared about it. Trapped in a cycle.
At the squat that week a small girl, the one whose hand Rami had held at the eye doctor’s, glued herself to my side when I taught. Though she was three, perhaps even four, she did not speak. Her father was there with her, though I had never seen him; many of the men were not around while we were. She listened and nodded, and in the English lessons I could tell she was learning the words. She would point out the photos when I would say cat or water or house. She drew houses, again and again. One day, some of the volunteers outside the classroom were playing with the other children, making paper crowns. She came in to show me and I said, “Crown!” And she nodded, so proud, and pointed to my phone. We took a photo. Rami loved her, too, and when he spoke to her in Arabic she beamed. When I asked Rami if she spoke to him, he said no, she hadn’t said a word since she arrived. He drew her pictures—a frog, a house, a field of flowers—and she’d march around the courtyard with them, proud. She’d sit down with some crayons, coloring in the lines. Rami always let her paint his nails.
After, I took Rami back to Dimitra and Fady’s. Dimitra and I sat in her kitchen, having coffee. “Do you think Rami wants to stay here,” I asked. “With you and Fady and Leila. Go to the American school in the fall.”
“He has relatives in Germany.”
“I know. But not his parents.”
“Well. His brother. His father’s cousin, her husband. Still, family.”
I didn’t say anything.
Dimitra hit the table with her hand. “For fuck’s sake, Mira,” she said. “We can’t just take the kid. He doesn’t belong to everyone. He’s not mine, he’s not Fady’s, Leila is not his sister.”
But Leila was like a sister. To me, they were a family. “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Was just thinking aloud.”
“Sometimes you’re so first-world. So white. You think you have a solution to everything.”
“You haven’t thought of it?” I recalled Fady’s excitement when Rami watched soccer with him, which Leila had long outgrown. The way they’d all watch movies together on the big couches, piled under blankets, Fady’s special popcorn.
“Enough,” Dimitra said. “Change the subject, please.”
•
When I came home I felt as though I had forgotten something, and as I pushed open my door I remembered: the Captain was leaving, headed for the island with his family for the summer. “For the kids,” he’d said a few nights ago as we spoke on the balcony, as if I deserved an explanation. “Katerina took them out of school early,” he added, in case I was wondering. They were returning to Greece. His wife had a few weeks of vacation and would accompany them initially, but when she returned to Brussels he’d stay with the kids on the island.
I hurried home, bounded up the steps, and went out to the balcony and listened. Stuck on my side of the partition were a few Post-it notes, as if he had reached his arm around and placed them there.
Mira. I have to go. Talk soon.
The second one had his phone number. I still had the yellow pad on which he’d written it the first time, in the top drawer of my desk, a remnant from that first, early encounter with the heater that now felt like a surreal offering, rewritten by the contract between us.
The third: Δύναμη! Strength. This one was written in a different-colored pen, and then he included a goofy smiley face, which seemed delightfully out of character. I went inside and stuck all three on the wall atop my desk. I sat down hard in the chair. My lip was trembling.