Regan’s door and the passenger door opened, and Flora and Isabelle tumbled into their mother, embracing her from both sides. Regan kept crying. Flora started to cry. “We love you, Mom.” Isabelle said, “Jesus, guys, enough with the waterworks!” Despite her mean tone, Isabelle held Regan the tightest.
Regan did not deserve forgiveness, but Flora and Isabelle gave it to her anyway.
74
Charlotte
Charlotte stood in Regan’s kitchen,watching smoke rise from a pan of scorched chicken bits. Greek appliances were theworst! There was the oven, which displayed temperature in Celsius and wasn’t accurate or consistent anyway; the water heater that demanded you plan your shower thirty minutes in advance so it had time to warm up to tepid; the freestanding AC unit that was utterly incomprehensible with its tubes and buttons; and worst of all—the bane of Charlotte’s existence—the stove. Turn the burner knob to Medium, and you might get a low simmer (Hello, salmonella’s on the menu!) or flames leaping high into the air, incinerating your dinner and threatening to incinerate you.
Charlotte dumped the pan into Regan’s sink. She’d found the recipe for “Mom’s Famous Lemon Chicken” in Regan’s recipe book, handwritten. It was Charlotte’s handwriting, yet she had no memory of ever making lemon chicken, much less getting famous for it.
“Grammy, what happened?” Flora ran in with a dish towel, batting at the smoke.
“I just stepped away for a moment,” Charlotte lied. She’dbeen in the living room, halfway through a glass of chardonnay, staring at her phone and willing it to ring with a call from Paros. (Or a call fromanyone.)
She wanted a reason to leave this dilapidated apartment!
If Paros called, she could leave this dilapidated apartment!
Charlotte went into Regan’s bathroom and stared at her face in the mirror, which Flora had recently Windexed. Her skin was no longer elastic, and her eyes seemed dull. Charlotte wanted more days, more love, more kisses…another adventure! To press her saggy cheek to a man’s face, breathe him in. She wanted to grab a man’s bottom in her palms. How could she be elderly when she was still filled with yearning?
“Grammy?” Flora knocked softly.
“Just a moment!” Charlotte called, voice artificially bright. She reapplied lipstick with a shaking hand. In the mirror, she practiced her smile.
“Are you OK?”
“I’m fine!” called Charlotte. And then, as if God himself had heard her prayers, her cellphone rang.
75
Paros
Once a week, Paros waspulled from his duties in the Sloop Shop to teach knot-tying to the guests at the Tropical Bar. His class came at the end of Eduardo’s tutorial on creating bird sculptures from watermelon, and before Israel’s “Rum Cocktail Master Class.”
After his class, Monica cornered Paros and said, “I’ve got something for you, handsome.” She winked (happily married for decades, Monica had done her damnedest to retain her flirtatious ways) and handed Paros a paper letter in a paper envelope, the first he had ever received on board. It was a miracle the letter had reached him at all; someone at home had crossed out “Mr. Paros Georgiou, Ikaria Island” and written “Panagiotis Georgiou,The Flying Star,Port of Piraeus”—his family had never liked the fact that he’d had to choose an “Americanized” name to work on cruise ships. But Paros loved his snappy nickname…after all, it was the name Charlotte cried out in her giant bed as they moved atop her heavenly “pillowtop” mattress….
Oh, Paros! Paros, yes!
He recognized Charlotte’s handwriting at once, the swoops and curlicues only an American would have the audacity to create. Charlotte—a beautiful peacock, a scared little chestnut. Hehad placed his heart in her bejeweled fingers. He took the letter below deck, ignoring Monica’s nosy gaze and the implications of her wiggling eyebrows.
Paros shared his crew quarters with three other men. He wanted solitude to open what he desperately hoped was a love note, and climbed down the narrow ladder that led into the engine room, a dim chamber deep within the ship’s hull. Grease-streaked pipes and steel were illuminated by bare, overhead bulbs, and the air was heavy with the scent of diesel fuel. As Paros carefully slid his thumb along the envelope’s edge, easing it open, he felt the ship’s engine vibrating through the floor beneath him.
Charlotte wrote that her daughter Regan was missing in Greece—shocking words that struck Paros like a blow. The thought of a child—even a grown one—lost in a foreign country overwhelmed him with helplessness and fear.
But then, Charlotte’s tone changed. Tender endearments softened her harsh news. Charlotte wrote that she had made “terrible mistakes” and was coming to Greece. She offered, once her daughter was found safe, to visit his farm and kiss him. Paros closed his eyes and thanked God. The farm was now owned by his sons-in-law, but he knew the land held no worth for Charlotte.
The Flying Starsailing ship, however, she would adore, especially the Tropical Bar, which was stocked with chardonnay. She would admire the sixteen canvas sails unfurling like wings under towering masts.
When they had shopped together at an antique store in Savannah, in fact, she had admired a painting of two bulldogs in sailor costumes aboard a four-masted barquentine, and Paros had delighted his Charlotte by purchasing the artwork. He knew that she had hung the painting of bulldogs on a ship in her guest room, where her adult children slept when they came to visit.
Paros swooned. If Charlotte came aboard—maybe renting anOwner’s Cabin, why not?—Paros could join her at sunset. He could explain every detail of the complex rigging while Charlotte ignored him completely and knew herself to be the most fashionable and fabulous woman on deck. Charlotte belonged on this glorious vessel!
Paros folded the letter carefully. Charlotte’s family was in crisis—and in her time of need, she was reaching for him. Charlotte had sent her cellular phone number. Paros went to Captain Pedro at once to request a guest aboard the ship. “An American?” said the captain, who was Argentine.
“Yes,” said Paros.
“She is your lady friend?”
