Where the Stars Still Shine(42)

“If you need Phoebe to take you to her doctor, I can ask her.”

I nod. “That would be good.”

Greg hoists himself to his feet, then helps me up. Right there, where it’s as if we’re standing in the sky, he hugs me and tells me he loves me. My cheek against his T-shirt brings back a thin slice of memory, of him hugging me when I was little. I was jumping off the porch steps of wherever we were living when the three of us lived together. I had no trouble on the first step or the second, but when I tried from the third, I fell and skinned my knees and palms. Greg was there to pick me up and wipe away the tears. My arms circle around him and so quietly that I’m not sure he’ll hear me I whisper into his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He kisses my forehead, which makes me think maybe he did.

I follow him back down the plywood staircase, trying harder now to picture what this house—our house—will look like when it’s finished. He talks about drywall and bamboo flooring and other things that mean nothing to me, but I don’t mind.

“So this boyfriend of yours—” he says, as we walk our bikes out to the street.

I climb onto my bike. “Just trust me, okay?”

Greg sighs. “I’m really not comfortable with this, but—okay.”

He turns off at Ada Street—after telling me that he plans to install a propane tank this afternoon so I can shower in the Airstream—and I ride on alone to Georgia’s house. When I coast to a stop at her front walk, she’s already puttering in the yard, wearing floral gardening gloves and a pair of rubber clogs. When she hugs me, she smells of dirt and grass and lipstick. It’s a pleasant combination.

“Did you get yourself all sorted out the other day?” The gloves she hands me are blue and much larger than the ones she’s wearing, and they’re a little scratchy inside. She leads me to a stack of mulch bags.

“I guess so.”

“If I can throw in my two cents,” she says, “I suspect you’re not much like your mother at all, Callista. You may go off on your own to work through your thoughts, but the difference is—and this is important—you come back.”

I never thought about it that way.

“You’re like your father in that regard, and”—she gestures at the top bag and indicates that I should spread it around the low shrubs along the front porch—“I suspect that you’re not running away so much as you are running to something. Or, someone.”

My thoughts go immediately to Alex and, as if she can read my mind, Georgia smirks. She reaches up and puts her gloved hands on my face. “Your cheeks give you away, matákia mou.”

“What does that mean?” The bag of mulch is heavier than I expected and I stagger over to the shrubs with it.

“It means ‘my eyes,’” she says. “Not literally, but—it’s like saying you are the apple of my eye.”

“What about ‘korítsi mou’?” I ask, repeating the words Greg used at the sheriff’s office in Illinois, as I tear open the bag of mulch and upend it on top of the old mulch. I’m not sure I’m even saying the words correctly. “What does that mean?”

“The literal translation is ‘my girl,’” she says. “But it implies that the girl in question is loved and held dear. It’s used by parents. Now, if a young man were to say latría mou, which means ‘my darling,’ he loves you … or he’s trying to charm you out of your underpants. Either way, he’s serious about something.”

I distribute the dark and earthy-smelling mulch around the bushes and laugh that Alex didn’t need to trot out Greek terms of endearment to get me out of my underpants. But it’s a good laugh, not one rooted in I’m-shit-in-the-back-of-someone’s-truck shame. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The work is sweaty, but it doesn’t take long before the mulch is spread and the weeds are pulled. Georgia did most of the weeding herself and confessed she paid a neighbor boy to mow the grass so I wouldn’t have to do that part. I feel as if I got off pretty light on my punishment, but—I don’t know. I guess I get what Greg was trying to tell me.

“I’m having lunch today with my friend,” my grandma says, as we peel off our gloves. “Would you like to come with me?”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“I wouldn’t invite you if it was an imposition,” she says. “And Evgenia wants to meet you.”

The name feels familiar, but I can’t place it. “Okay.”

I wash up in Georgia’s bathroom, finger-combing my hair to work out the tangles and sniffing the underarms of my T-shirt to make sure I don’t smell foul. I look as if I’ve been working in someone’s yard and the end of my nose is a little pink from the sun, but I hope her friend won’t mind.

The tiny stone house with an old-fashioned sailing ship carved into the wooden front door is within walking distance, and not far from the sponge docks. On the way, Georgia teaches me how to say hello and thank you in Greek, making me repeat the words over and over until I have the pronunciation down cold. We’re greeted by a salt-and-pepper-haired man, barrel shaped and broad enough to nearly fill the doorway.

“Georgia!” He kisses my grandma on both cheeks. “Good to see you! This must be your granddaughter. We’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” His hand swallows mine as he shakes it. “Come in, come in! Please, sit.”