Kitabı oku: «The Summer House in Santorini», sayfa 2
2
Four days earlier, Manhattan
Until that moment, the worst moment of Anna’s life had been the night just after New Year’s when she’d found out her father had died. Her mother had mentioned it in passing, right in between a summary of the previous weekend’s yoga retreat and an interrogation of Anna’s dating life. The news that her father, the man who had given her life, had dropped dead of a heart attack was apparently on the same level as how well the other middle-aged faux yogis could hold a downward dog.
Not that they had been close, of course, Anna and her father. At least not recently. He had left when Anna was six, riding away in a taxi as Anna’s mother had screamed down the street after him, yelling all sorts of names and insults, the white of her satin robe fluttering in the darkness as the wind caught it and tore it open. Anna’s big sister, Lizzy, eight at the time, held Anna close as she watched from the window and called down to her mama. Lizzy thought Anna was screaming because she was sad and scared but, really, she just wanted to tell her mother that her robe was open, and neighbors were starting to peek through their windows at the commotion. She had wondered for twenty years how someone could be so angry and embarrassed and in pain that they stood in the street with a boob out without realizing it.
But now, as Anna stood on Fifth Avenue, looking up at the third-story window of the man who was both her boss and her lover and saw another woman pressed against it, him behind her, both of them naked, faces twisted up in passion and agony and pleasure, Anna understood. She could be in a bathrobe, flapping open in the breeze, the whole of Manhattan staring at her, and she wouldn’t be able to think anything but, “You fool. You fool, you fool, you ABSOLUTE FOOL.” Like a mantra of disbelief, it kept coming.
She was devastated, but not for the reason she should have been. Marcus, the man she had been seeing for over a year, was fucking another woman right in front of her. Unknowingly, of course, but that didn’t make it any less jarring. But staring up at their bodies squished against the window, leaving sweat marks on the glass, she felt defeated. She felt worthless. She didn’t mean anything to him. She had had no delusions of romance, but it wasn’t until that moment that she understood exactly what she was to him: convenient.
When Anna had been five years old, she’d been chosen as the “Model Student” of her kindergarten class for the month of May. This meant that she was kind to her classmates, did well on assignments, and was the first to volunteer for things. To be honest, she wasn’t actually that social; she was quite shy, even as a child. A new Model Student was chosen every month, and there were only twelve children in her class. Eliminate the ones who got in trouble a lot, and Anna was pretty much guaranteed the title at some point in the year, regardless of how bold or social she actually was.
But that didn’t matter to five-year-old Anna. She brought her shiny yellow ribbon home that day and presented it proudly to her parents as she walked through the front door after school. Her father, Giorgos – the girls called him Baba, but their mother always introduced him as George – scooped her into a hug and tossed her in the air, spinning her around and cheering. Grace, Anna’s mother, simply said “well done” and poured herself another glass of wine.
Anna asked if she could hang the ribbon on the refrigerator, but her mother said that that space was only for important things to remember. Giorgos had looked coolly at his wife, but then nuzzled Anna’s hair and smiled. “What your mother means, my darling, is that the refrigerator is for boring things, and your award is anything but boring. Why don’t we go hang it somewhere in your room?”
The next morning, Anna’s mother had left for work without saying a word to any of them. Giorgos had piled Anna, Lizzy, and their school things into his painter’s van like always to take them to school. But when they got there, he’d told Anna to stay put; that he wanted to talk to her.
“Baba, what’s wrong? Am I in trouble?” Anna asked, watching her sister walk into the building.
But as soon as Lizzy was inside, Giorgos took Anna to the local breakfast chain for as many chocolate chip pancakes as she could handle. “Model Students get celebratory breakfasts,” he said, taking a bite of his short stack and putting his arm around Anna, who was sat on the stool next to him, still barely able to reach the counter. As he chewed, a bit of syrup dripped out of his mouth and down his face. Anna pointed and laughed. Her father pretended to be confused before leaning in and planting a big kiss on Anna’s cheek, rubbing the syrup in and tickling her with his beard.
After they ate, Giorgos drove Anna back to school and dropped her off at the front door with a note saying she had been at a dentist appointment. Anna was about to ask why they were lying if Model Students were allowed celebratory breakfasts, but when she looked up at her Baba, he looked so sad, so she just gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek and went inside.
A couple of weeks later, just after Anna’s sixth birthday, Giorgos was kicked out of the house, and Lizzy held Anna back as they watched from the window. Their mother would cite this incident of skipping school, alongside temperamental outbursts and a string of affairs she had discovered, in the ensuing divorce and custody battle that would result in Giorgos being sent back to Greece. Grace had never taken the last name Xenakis, and as soon as the divorce was finalized, she changed her daughters’ names to Linton to match her own. Anna and Lizzy would never see their father again.
Anna had a difficult time coming to terms with her father’s infidelity. It didn’t make sense to her. “Baba loves us,” she told her mother. “He would never do anything like that. He would never hurt us.”
“You’re a child,” Grace had said. “One day, you’ll understand just what a man will do, and then they’ll never be able to surprise you with how terrible they can be. But until then, you’ll just have to trust me.”
Standing on the sidewalk outside Marcus’s apartment, her mantra repeating in her mind, Anna finally understood what her mother meant. She did not love this man. She did not have a family with him. But as she watched him through the window, as she felt her world crumbling around her, she began to feel, for the first time, as her mother must have felt: discarded.
Half an hour later, Anna slammed her bedroom door shut and slumped against it, the tears finally coming. She had probably woken her roommate, but she didn’t care. She had been fighting back the tears the entire subway ride home, and she was at her breaking point. She tried and failed to push out of her mind the image of what she had seen, but it stayed front and center as she wept.
It wasn’t even the fact that Marcus was sleeping with someone else. Anna had known as soon as she started seeing him that their relationship wasn’t a monogamous thing. It had been borderline cliché, the way they had hooked up at an opening just over a year before. She had been working at the gallery for months, but it was the first time she had spoken to Marcus, the gallery’s owner and world-famous photographer. Well, as world-famous as a photographer could be, anyway. To Anna, who had studied photography in college and been working for years trying to get a job at a gallery, he may as well have been Chris Hemsworth. She nearly died when he walked up to her at the event, and within a couple of hours they were in a hotel room.
No, the awful thing for Anna had been watching her future crumble with every thrust. Anna was just a gallery assistant, and one with ambitions to become a photographer at that. Girls like her were a dime a dozen for Marcus. And despite the fact that she had worked for years to get a job at MarMac, if she wasn’t useful to him anymore, she would simply be cast aside for the next girl waiting in the wings. At least, that’s what she feared. After a few minutes, Anna crawled up onto her bed, settling on top of a pile of clean laundry, tears still streaming down her cheeks, images of that woman’s boobs pressed against Marcus’s window burned into her mind, and cried herself to sleep.
3
Anna awoke what felt like seconds later to find her elbow buzzing. As she opened her eyes, she was confused to find that the sun was streaming brightly through the window, and she quickly snapped them shut again. The buzzing stopped for a few seconds and then started up again. Anna used the hand that wasn’t pinned underneath her body to feel around on the bed for her phone. She dug through the pile of clothes and pulled it out, swiping to answer her sister’s call.
“It’s so early,” she said with a croak. “What do you want?”
“Nice to talk to you, too, dear sister,” Lizzy said, barely audible over the noise of other people talking and what sounded like cutlery scraping against crockery. Anna could imagine the mess hall of the farm as it had been the one time she’d visited: crowded and sparse, but full of suspiciously happy people. “And it’s nearly nine, Banana. Not exactly the wee hours of the morning.”
Anna jumped a bit at the realization of what time it was, but them images of what she had seen last night came back to her, and she instantly lost all motivation to go into work.
“Hey, that’s still early for some people. What do you want?”
“Touchy, touchy.” The noise behind Lizzy died down as she presumably stepped outside. “You okay, sis? You sound like you’ve been up all night crying.”
Anna knew there was no point hiding anything from her sister, but she didn’t want to get into it with her. She had somehow managed to keep it from Lizzy that she had been seeing her boss for the last eighteen months. “Not all night,” she said, “but I don’t really want to talk about it. What’s up?”
“Well, it’s probably better that you’re not at work now,” Lizzy replied. “I have some news.”
Anna sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed, her breathing shallow. Those were the four most terrifying words in her sister’s vocabulary. “What happened?”
“Well,” she said, “some lawyers called from Greece.”
“Greece?” Anna asked. “You mean Santorini?”
“Well, actually, the law firm is based in Athens. But yes, it was about Dad.”
Anna took a deep breath in. Talking about her dad was not what she needed this morning. “And?”
“And it turns out we have a bit of an inheritance on our hands.”
“What kind of inheritance?” Okay, this was actually possibly good news. Anna’s mind immediately went to all the things she could do with inheritance money. But as quickly as the visions of buying a loft apartment and a shopping spree on Fifth Avenue and a first class ticket to a far-off destination came into her mind, they were replaced with a feeling of resentment for her father.
“A house,” Lizzy said. “In Santorini.”
“I think it’s on Santorini,” Anna said reflexively. “Santorini is an island.”
“That doesn’t even remotely matter,” Lizzy said. “The point is that you and I now share a house in Greece.”
“How much is it worth?” Anna asked, apparently too quickly.
“How is that your first question, Anna?” Lizzy asked, her voice raising. “Not about Dad, or why he left it to us? Not even ‘when can we go there on vacation?’”
“Sorry,” Anna said with a laugh. “But you know I’m not the number-one fan of Greek exports, so I doubt I’ll be headed there on vacation any time soon.”
Anna swore she could hear a wicked grin in Lizzy’s voice as she responded. “That’s just it, baby sis. Looks like you’ll be going there sooner than expected.”
“What? Why?”
“One of us has to go accept the inheritance in person.”
“To Athens?”
“No, actually to Santorini. There’s a Greek law that says you have to accept real estate in front of a notary public in the region where the property is.”
“So one of us has to go to Santorini. Why does it have to be me? Why can’t you go?”
Lizzy sighed. “I really wish I could, Anna. You know how much I’ve wanted to go back since Dad’s funeral. But it’s asparagus season, so I can’t.”
Anna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Asparagus season?” she said, almost shouting. “Are you kidding me? You want me, the one who didn’t even go to Greece for her own father’s funeral, to go now because you have to harvest some asparagus?”
“Anna, that’s not fair,” Lizzy said. “You know I’m responsible for the well-being of this farm.”
“It’s a cooperative farm! You don’t even get paid!” Anna was definitely shouting now. “Surely, it’s not the end of the world if you take a few days off to do something this important.”
Lizzy was quiet for a moment, then responded softly. “I’m really sorry, Anna. I know how much you hated Dad and everything to do with him. But for us to get the house, you have to go accept it.
“As for the farm, I hope that one day you understand what it’s like to be a part of a community – a family – that has each other’s backs. But, until then, don’t pretend to know what sort of obligation I should or should not feel to the people here.”
She was quiet for a long time, but eventually Lizzy sighed, and Anna knew then that she wasn’t too angry.
“I’m sorry, Liz. I didn’t mean to get mad. I just don’t want to go. I know you’d like to have a vacation home in Greece, but that’s just not important to me. Plus, I have work. And it’ll take me months to accrue more vacation time.”
“I’m sure if you ask your boss and explain the situation he’d let you have the time. He likes you, doesn’t he? What’s his name? Martin?”
“Marcus,” Anna said, wincing as she said his name. “I don’t know, Liz.”
“I’ll tell you what…” Lizzy said. “If you go there for a week and still hate it, we can sell the house. How does that sound?”
Anna cringed at the idea of having to spend a week in her father’s house, interacting with his family, sleeping in his bed. It felt weird after hating him for so long. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it, okay?”
“That’s all I ask,” Lizzy said over the sound of a bell in the background. “Now I have to go. That’s last call for breakfast. But let me know soon. There’s a bit of a deadline on us accepting, and the grandparents are not making it easy for us. I don’t think they expected anyone other than Dad to ever have it.”
“Okay. Good to know, thanks. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Bye, Banana.”
Anna held the phone up for several seconds after the call disconnected, so unsure of what to do that she felt paralyzed. But regardless of her family drama and what happened with Marcus, she did still have to go to work, so she got up and got dressed. She took noticeably less care with her appearance than usual, which was saying something. She pulled on the first clothes she could find and caught the subway to work.
The entire commute, she bounced back and forth between wondering if she should go to Greece and wondering if she should confront Marcus. On the one hand, she didn’t want anything to do with her cheating father’s legacy and, regardless of their relationship, Anna felt hurt by what she saw at Marcus’s the night before. On the other hand, surely her dad owed her at least this, and Marcus hadn’t really done anything wrong since they weren’t technically exclusive. The two issues swirled around in her head as she emerged in SoHo and walked up the steps to the MarMac gallery.
As she walked in, she was almost immediately greeted by one of the other assistants, who threw a thumb drive at her that she barely caught.
“These are the early entries for the Emerging Talent contest. Marcus wants us to screen them as they come in so there aren’t hundreds of entries for him to go through all at once. And make them anonymous; he wants to be able to tell his sister that the reason her kid didn’t win is because he’s a shit photographer, not because he’s trying to mess with her.”
Anna nodded and turned the thumb drive over in her hand as she walked up the stairs to the office. A couple of years ago, she would have jumped at the chance to enter something like this. Even though there were dozens of contests young photographers could enter, Marcus’s was special in that it usually resulted in the winner actually gaining momentum in the art world. She even had a collection she had shot just before starting at the gallery that she knew Marcus would like; a series of photos of forgotten Manhattan landmarks. But she was a gallery assistant now, not a photographer. And she worked for Marcus. She couldn’t enter.
She sat down at an open desk and looked out over the gallery below. A buyer was there already, someone she recognized from previous events. Rumor had it that Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were her clients. As the gallery manager shook her hand and put a sold sticker next to the painting, Anna wished, not for the first time, that her photos could be seen by so many influential people. Almost everyone who showed at MarMac went on to do well. But instead she was sat behind the desk trying to anonymize Marcus’s nephew’s contest entry.
Anna took out her laptop, connecting to the server and opening up her email like she did every morning. An email came in from Marcus almost immediately.
U ok?
She looked up toward his office, where she could see him peeking through the window.
Not really, she typed out, but she couldn’t press Send. It didn’t feel right to confront him.
Instead, she stood up to go to the bathroom, avoiding looking toward Marcus’s office on her way. As she passed through the door that separated the gallery from the office, she turned her un-made-up face away from the couple of people coming through the front door, walking as quickly as she could across the marble floor.
Once she made it to the Ladies’ room, Anna leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on her face. What would she say to Marcus? She was notoriously bad at lying; Lizzy used to clean her out of her Halloween candy when they played poker as kids. Her blushing usually gave her away. Could she manage to get through a work day with Marcus without bringing up what she had seen the night before?
But she didn’t have time to figure that out, because the door to the bathroom creaked open, and Marcus poked his head through, stepping in once he saw that Anna was alone.
Standing in front of him, it was easy for Anna to understand how she had fallen under Marcus’s spell. He had a universal appeal, looking rugged yet refined at the same time. On the rare occasions he had taken Anna somewhere public, women and men alike would stare at him and shoot daggers at her.
But now, Anna was the one shooting daggers, hard as she tried not to give too much away.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Marcus said, the slight southern draw that Anna was pretty sure was an affectation coming out strong.
“What are you talking about?”
Marcus smiled and looked at his feet. “I’m talking about you coming into work nearly two hours late looking like you got hit by a bus. I know you’re sleeping with the boss, but you wouldn’t want to appear to be taking advantage.”
Anna felt her stomach churn. Normally, she would have laughed it off, but she had too much on her mind to make the effort. “Are you kidding me?” she asked. “I’ve never asked you for a thing, especially not since our little arrangement began. Excuse me for having a bad day.”
Marcus’s smile dropped, and he stepped toward Anna, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “Hey, hey, what’s going on? I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m fine,” she said. She opened her mouth to say more, but she felt the truth of last night bubbling inside her, so she shut it tight.
“You know you can tell me anything, right, Anna?” he asked, condescension dripping from his words, as if she were a little girl trying to hide that she had eaten the last cookie.
“Is that what you said to the girl you fucked last night?” She felt the words tumble out of her mouth, trying and failing to catch them and shove them back in. So much for not confronting him. Marcus gave very little away, but she could tell from the twitch in his eye that she had surprised him.
“You were at the theater?”
“No, I was at your apartment. Or, I was on my way there when I saw you through the window.” Though nice to know you were flaunting her around at the theatre, too.
Marcus was quiet for a moment, then his eyes widened as he realized what she must have seen. Then, just as quickly, he was back on his game. “Anna, I’m sorry that you saw that, but surely you didn’t think you were the only person I was dating?” He was digging in his heels; asserting his dominance. He must have thought so little of her.
She realized in that moment just how disposable she was to him. And as long as she was disposable, she was never going to get anywhere working for him. If she had felt discarded last night, she felt absolutely disintegrated now. She needed to figure something else out.
“Marcus, I need to take some time off,” she said.
“Great,” he said. “Submit your vacation request to HR for approval.”
“No,” she said, “I have to go now. I have nearly three weeks of paid vacation accrued. I’ll be taking it now. When there are two weeks left, I’ll send in my notice.”
He frowned at her. “So much for not taking advantage of the situation.”
She glared at him. “I’m not taking advantage. My dad died a few months ago, and he left me a property in Greece. I have to go there to claim it. I only have a small window before it goes to someone else, so I have to go now.”
“You have to go on vacation urgently enough that you’re willing to quit this job?” He laughed. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope. Not kidding,” she said, shaking her head. “And it’s not a vacation. I’ve just explained the situation.”
He nodded slowly. “I hope you know that you’ve just ruined your future,” he said, but Anna saw a flicker of hurt cross his face, and she felt a tiny spark of pride that she had taken back control – she’d hurt him before he could hurt her again.
Without saying another word, he slipped through the door and was gone, leaving Anna standing there alone, her hands still dripping with water.
She kept staring at the door for a good minute after he left. How had her frustration with Marcus turned into a decision to go to Greece? But she had said it, and she couldn’t take it back. She wouldn’t grovel for her job back. She wasn’t about to let Marcus think she was taking advantage of their arrangement. Not after this.
She dried her hands, pulled her phone out of her pocket and texted Lizzy:
You win. I’ll leave in a couple of days
It looked like Anna was going to Santorini, whether she liked it or not.
