I’ve been home for two hours. I’m tired, hungry and I should really go to sleep, but I’m not going to. I’m going to write and tell you one more time how much you changed my life. I don’t know how long it takes for mail to get to Greece from New York, but I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?
Before I left, you asked me to tell you what my favorite thing we did was. I couldn’t tell you at the time I was so busy fighting my tears and trying to be a ‘strong woman.’
Now, after daydreaming about you for eleven hours on an airplane, I have to say it was the walks you took me on through the foothills to get to Moni Evaggelistrias. Such a beautiful church. But it wasn’t the church I enjoyed. It was just being with you. Hearing you tell stories of your family as we idly walked, pointing out to me what plants were medicinal and which were poisonous, and just… being in silence together. Is that strange? I’ve never been so comfortable with someone before that I didn’t feel a need to fill the silence with chatter. I’m a New Yorker: silence is a strange concept to us. It’s like a word we got from another culture but don’t actually understand what it truly means.
I meant what I said: Iwillcome back. Time is the only thing keeping me from you right now and I will weather it. But I feel a bit like Persephone banished back to hell, only my punishment is far worse. If only my time in New York were but a season….
Please know that I will come back.
Utterly, completely, passionately yours.
Ruth
Joanna folded the letter delicately and put it back in its envelope. There were little bubbles on the ink where it looked like someone had cried over it. Were they her mother’s tears upon writing it? Or her father’s? At that point Joanna was seconds away from adding her own.
She didn’t know if she had another in her, but the envelope labeled number 2 was right in front of her.
Why had he numbered them? How often had he read them? Would he spend his evenings recanting the romance he had had with her mother? Letter by letter? Were men even capable of being that romantic?
Maybe Grecian men, but certainly not any others that she had ever met.
Delicately, she pulled out the second letter.
It too was from 1982:
George,
I got your letter today.I was so nervous when I got your reply because I couldn’t remember what I had said to you in my first letter. It takes so long for mail to get between us. It’s too much. I was terrified that I said something to make you not want to talk to me anymore. But then I read what you said, and saw that you, too, felt the same way that I did— and still do!
I smiled, I laughed, I cried while reading it, but I mostly smiled. Beamed with joy. My heart feels so light and giddy, knowing that you feel the same way I do. I’ve never felt this way before. To the rest of the world I’m an old 39 year old woman… in my heart I’m a schoolgirl again. I blame you. Bless you for doing this to me.
I’ll be able to take another vacation in a few months. Just five months. Sounds absurd, but knowing there’s a light at the end of the tunnel makes it easier.
You’ve already noticed, I’m sure, and combed through them, but I’ve sent you pictures of all the places I go everyday, and given you a map with my daily routes. Try to walk with me. Try to visualize where I am. Everyday I do the same. Everyday I’m in Skiathos. Breathing the air. Feeling the light. Smelling the sea. It’s my happy space. A mansion within my mind. Create a mansion of my world, and let’s build a bridge between the two?
Say a prayer for me.Call out the old gods as I know you silently do. You’re a man of magic. You’ve managed to keep it from everyone else, but I know your secret. I saw you communing with them.
I’m going to write you as often as I can, and I’m going to call you as often as I can afford. My brain will always be mentally calculating the time difference between us, wondering what you’re doing. Wondering if you’re awake. Wondering if you’ve returned from your long walks. I compared myself to being Persephone in the last letter, I think, but now I wonder if Odysseus wouldn’t be a better comparison? Can I be a female Odysseus? Will you destroy the shroud every night for me? Protect my palace from encircling real estate investors?
Keep it. I know you don’t love Villa Azure as much as I do, but keep it for me, so that I can return to the place where I fell in love with you, and will know where to look for you when I return home.
Because Skiathos will soon be my home.
Joanna putthe letter back in the satchel as she had the others. She guessed where the story was heading and didn’t have the heart to keep reading right then.
A lot of things were starting to make sense, though.
When Joanna was a teenager her mother suddenly started dating again, but she never dated anyone for longer than two weeks. She never seemed to find just the right guy. A lot of them were great men. Charming, handsome, funny. But they had one handicap that they couldn’t overcome. Now she knew what that was.
They weren’t George. They weren’t her father.
But what had happened?
Joanna had cleaned out her mother’s apartment when she died a couple of years back. She didn’t find any kind of memento or keepsake from George. Unlike he who seemingly kept everything he could relating to their brief romance.
Joanna walked out of the room and locked it up. She needed a breather.
George had apparently intimated to her mom that he wanted to sell the hotel. If Villa Azure meant nothing to him, why didn’t he sell it and move to New York to be with her mom?
