Halfway to You(79)

“It’s the boat.”

“It’s more than the boat,” I said with a laugh. “You’re great with them.”

“I want my own,” he said.

“Children?”

“Yes.” He rolled onto his side, facing me. His pectorals pressed together, and his arms bulged. He was so beautifully tan compared to the washed-out brightness of the white deck, the pale water, the dusty hills of the island in the distance, and the white sky.

Practically dozing, I asked, “When?” I did not yet understand the weight of what he was telling me.

“Soon,” he said.

“Don’t you need to find a woman first?”

“Are you not a woman?” he asked.

I cracked one eye open to find him staring at me. I lifted my head.

“How would you like to wed, Ann?”

I thought he was joking; I really did. We’d known each other for only a few months. It seemed ridiculous, me lying there beside him on his boat, with red rope marks crisscrossing my skin. Our time together seemed like a textbook fling to me. How could we be on such wildly different pages? It was as if we weren’t even reading the same book; mine was in English, and his in Greek.

And yet, for a brief moment, I allowed myself the fantasy of saying yes.

I imagined being welcomed into a huge, devoted family. I imagined a big wedding, honeymooning on Dimitri’s boat, sailing to Spain. I imagined getting pregnant, bearing his children, a boy first and then a girl. I could write between nap times and cooking, start a garden and fumble through domesticity. Dimitri would offer gentle encouragement, patience, and fierce love.

It was a pleasant fantasy, but I saw it from a third-person perspective, like watching a movie. The wife looked like me, but I didn’t truly recognize her. I’d experienced this hesitation before, with Luca—something about us didn’t fit.

I rolled onto my side and looked into Dimitri’s black-brown eyes. I studied the untamable curls of thick hair at his temple, pushed back and held in place by the grit of dried salt water. I wanted to kiss him one last time, but I knew that if I did, he’d get the wrong idea.

“I think you would make a fine husband,” I said, “but I would make a terrible wife.”

Dimitri was passionate, but he wasn’t a fool. He knew that what I’d just said was no.

The net wobbled under his weight as he stepped across the knotted ropes and onto the deck. Without a word, he walked toward the stern and out of sight, leaving me where I lay.

Is this what I’ve become? I wondered, watching the fish dance below me. A disappointment in someone else’s story? I had been naive to think that I could move through life like this—noncommittal, disengaged—without someone getting hurt.

Dimitri was a turning point for me; I owed him that.

When I returned home in the late summer of 1995, I applied—finally—for a volunteer teaching program. It was about time I showed up and did something of meaning. Back at Trevi Fountain, on that first day Todd and I slept together, Todd had been right to criticize my idle lifestyle. Teaching, I soon found, gave me purpose. It was not fragile and fickle, like my creative writing. It was not static success. It was equal parts challenge and reward.

For the next three years, the volunteer teaching program took me across the globe. In the off months, Keith and Carmella became my blips of joy. I went on day trips to Tuscany and Milan with Carmella, vacations to France and Portugal with Keith and sometimes Barbara and Iris too.

And for a while, I had purpose.

And some days, I even forgot to miss Todd.





ANN


Lima, Peru

September 1998

In September 1998, I was just returning to Lima from volunteer teaching in Sacred Valley, Peru. I hadn’t been in touch with anyone for six months—my lodging had been remote—so I’d asked Carmella to forward any important-looking mail to my hotel to meet my arrival. Sprawled on the cool duvet of my hotel bed with a large stack of missed correspondence, I dialed Keith.

“She’s alive,” he answered. He sounded older—or perhaps just tired. It was nine thirty in the evening in New York.

“Keith? It’s Ann.” I pinned the phone between my ear and shoulder so I could thumb through envelopes.

“I know it’s Ann. Who else would call me from a wacky foreign number at this time of night?”

I chuckled. “Telemarketers?”

“I’m glad you didn’t die in the jungle.”

“Almost did,” I said, “from a fever back in Cuzco.”

“Yet there you are.”

I glanced around the dim room. “Here I am.”

Despite the humbling and transformative work of teaching, I remained a walking contradiction: both travel obsessed and dissatisfied as a nomad. No matter how far I traveled, no matter how many strangers I met and laughed with and got to know, I missed the certain contentedness that only a close friend could offer.

“So . . . ,” Keith prompted. “What’s new in Ann Land?”

“I have so many stories to tell you.” The kids in Sacred Valley had been earnest, kind, inspiring. This country and its history were astounding. I wanted to share everything with Keith. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“I want to hear everything, of course . . .”