But only minutes later came a knock on the door. You had to be buzzed in to the building, so no one knocked except the woman on the second floor who got angry when we didn’t lock the building door from the inside at night, or the superintendent who came to collect the payment for the shared utilities—but she had come by two days earlier. Nefeli always let herself in, too, but she always announced herself, slightly irritated. Myrto let me in.
It was the Captain. He wore jeans and a navy T-shirt. Rubber sandals, the type soccer players wear. An old duffel bag at his side. Light beard. New glasses, dark red. I smiled. I so rarely saw him in person, and this glimpse into his wardrobe warmed my heart. I could hardly connect him to the person I spoke with in that precarious safety of the balcony.
“I was loading my car but wanted to check once more if you were home.”
“New glasses,” I said. So strange to do so watching his facial expressions, seeing his body language, as I spoke. He smiled.
“Do you want to have a beer?” As though I invited him in every evening.
He hesitated. “I’m sorry.” He drew the words out. “I have to go.”
He looked down at me, breathed in. Then he placed his hand on my head, as if in benediction. “Be good,” he said. He moved his hand through my hair, first as if he’d gone to playfully tousle it but reconsidered midmotion. It was an awkward moment, but then he continued running his hand through its length, slowly, tangles and all. A pleasant shiver ran down the back of my neck, my spine.
He brought his hand to my cheek, tapped my nose. “You got some sun,” he said.
I touched my nose and smiled. My words were lodged in my throat. “See you,” I said.
13
The Captain
Katerina and the kids returned from Brussels and I rejoined them in Kifissia. Those several days before we left for the island, we didn’t discuss a legitimate split. Katerina was not wavering, but I suspect she feared the judgment of her friends and her parents, and perhaps also the unknown. In no hurry to go through with anything official, she accepted the odd, indeterminate state between us. Though sometimes it frustrated me, other times I gladly accepted it. There was a renewed affection between us, and we even had sex far more often than we had in years.
Then one night, afterward, she emerged from the bathroom in a pair of white pajamas and T-shirt: “This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t proceed with the divorce,” she said. We had not yet used the word, but she now spoke of divorce the way others might have discussed a long vacation, a new house—something exciting in the indefinite future.
She got into bed beside me and asked if I regretted anything. I asked her where I should start. She laughed. But though I would never tell her that the marriage, this life, was never what I had envisioned for myself, I could not imagine another reality, not really.
When I asked her the same, though, her face turned serious. “Regret,” she said. “I regret regret.”
I stared at the ceiling fan, and she sat back up and scrolled through her phone. A friend from Brussels had sent her some photos, which she showed me. One close-up captured her profile. She was laughing, a raucous, full-body laugh, and I felt a pang of sadness, knowing that I could never give her such joy. I commented how happy and young she looked, and she smiled. I didn’t ask who had taken the photo, or who waited on the other end of the message. In another life I would ask who had sent it, but I no longer had the right.
It’s a horrible feeling, to be with one person but thinking of another.
I lay there staring at the ceiling. There had been something in her motions, her body, the way she pitched her hips up toward me as we had sex, that had felt new, unfamiliar. Something unsettling, even haunting, about the entire act.
It made one thing clear: she was still in love. Just not with me.
Later, I sat on the balcony of our bedroom, which overlooked our green street stretching ahead in front of me, widening as it ascended the hill before it dipped down into a small square that contained a large fountain and two lively cafés. Katerina poked her head outside and startled me. “I’m going to sleep,” she said.
“Me too.”
But I stalled, read a bit of a novel. When I finally got into bed Katerina turned to face me. “I worry about you alone, without us to tether you.” She intertwined her smooth, cold feet in mine, and we fell asleep together. How can anyone possibly understand what goes on in a marriage? How can anyone put it to language?
I woke in the middle of the night to what I recognized as the long, lamenting blast of a ship’s foghorn, but I was not near the sea, and this was impossible.
The next morning I dressed in the shaky early light and went for a run. The park was fuller than I remember it being on Saturday mornings. Everyone had, all at once, taken up running, then stayed in these clothes all day long. Athens looked like a Nike ad. I used to see the former prime minister running here, in expensive running gear and a gaggle of security. Mira had told me she’d seen the current prime minister running through Lykavittos, with two men and a woman in old sweatpants and T-shirts, and they’d smiled and waved at her. I came across the bend on a lesser-run trail and frightened a couple whose posture signaled they were either fighting or guilty. They looked at me as though I’d discovered them. I apologized and kept going.
I ran much longer than usual.
I knew I could not keep up this duality much longer, and when I returned to the house I’d tell Katerina I would go to the island but stay at my father’s during the time she was there. When she went back to Brussels, I’d stay there with the kids so they wouldn’t have to leave.
When I came home, the twins asked me how many turtles I’d seen in the park, and I lied and told them three. I hadn’t paid attention. I decided against my earlier idea. They all looked so happy. Katerina, still in her white pajamas, made pancakes. I walked to the massive refrigerator and filled my glass with ice, making a clownish show of it, acting surprised as all the ice tumbled to the floor.
Katerina looked up absentmindedly, and Ifigenia asked, “What is wrong with you?” before they realized I was trying to make them laugh.
•
The night before we left for the island, I overhead a bit of Katerina’s phone conversation with her sister Effie. They were talking about the EU, which Katerina was adamant about Greece staying in.
“Who knows what will happen without the EU,” Katerina said. “Without the euro. We go back to the drachma?”
It was clear from Katerina’s responses that Effie disagreed. So many Greeks wanted to try something new. End the suffering already.
You see? I don’t blame anyone. But in a way, I do.
I was watching television alone in the den when Katerina reappeared and said they were all going to the movies. Normally she’d have invited me to join, but we had settled quietly into a new normal: separate lives underneath one roof. She asked if I wanted her to bring me something to eat, but I said I’d be fine.
I was not used to being alone in this space; I even missed their noise. A few buildings over, someone held a party, the balcony adorned with white Moroccan lights. I thought of Morocco, leaving it, passing the Canary Islands, so bright and colorful they felt like a storybook.
On another balcony a couple kissed; nearby some small children played with trucks while an older man, their grandfather, smoked a cigarette and scrolled through his phone. A cat stared at me, wanting something. I felt uneasy, exposed, yet deeply embedded in my loneliness, its haunting presence. I missed the sea. I went back inside and turned on the television, but every channel I turned to featured people shouting at one another, or miserable. Others just showed what seemed an endless string of loud car-chase scenes. I felt anxious and turned it off.