Of the Greeks who ventured into and out of Cher’s world in those early hospital days, Cher found Alexa the most interesting.
“Are you Athenian? Were you born here, in the city?”
“No. Why?”
“Because.” Cher sorted around for why she might ask, why any answer might matter. She didn’t think she had a truly good cause to ask, but said “Because of Mr. Stamatos.”
“Mr. Stamatos?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you take up his cause. Because you petition me on his behalf.” Through clamped jaws Cher added, Every damned day, but it was unintelligible, three grunts, little more than that.
“Does your head ache? Do you need more pain?”
“Yes, a little. And no, no more pain please. Another pill, perhaps?”
On some days when Anastas comes into her room his great gray-green eyes pass over her as if she were a sheet, a white sheet, and as they pass they reconcile some unspoken question with an answer: no wrinkles, no need to touch, no need to fuss with this piece of linen today. On other days, she is not simple linen but Egyptian cotton of the finest and highest thread-count and his hands cannot bear but run themselves over all of her inches, smoothing, pressing the non-existent flaws just for the feel of . . . of the sheets.
Cher has no job; obtaining her Master of Fine Arts degree would be her job once the new term began. And after? Research. She wanted to do Research of some sort, something in the field of Art of course but Research. The effects of Art on Life; the effects on humanity when Art is absent, people deprived. The sensory effects of life on art, art on life . . . The art of Egyptian Linens and how sheets should be touched.
She supposed she had a lot of the same personality traits as Sunny; Cher just lived wider. Sunny lived narrow. Sunny had a job and career even before her MBA. Focus. A light-bulb moment for Cher. Focus! That was the key element in Sunny of which Cher seemed to own less. She would’ve bobbled her head, acknowledging this breakthrough in thinking regarding her own life and Sunny’s, but the halo brace factored out head bobbing and wags and self-body talk that Cher was and had always been much given toward.
Cher was staring at a view of nothing out the window beside her hospital bed. The Acropolis was out there on its hill. Or was it the hill that was the Acropolis. Either way, it was out there, Cher just couldn’t see it. On a clear day, maybe, but air quality in Athens stunk, so she was staring at variations on a yellow-brown atmosphere when Anastas brought her a phone and plugged it in next to her bed.
“You must think us the most completely awful parents in the universe,” Grace Lindegarde said.
“You’re right. But let’s not talk about that now, Mom.”
“But can’t I say how badly we feel? It’s not like the other times, is it? You’re not a few states over at that college -”
For some reason Cher did not jump in with “M.I.T.” to fill in the name of the college for Grace. There was something pathetic about her mother’s memory. “No, I’m not there; this isn’t like those times.”
“M.I.A. I never understood why you picked that one,” she said but her voice came around the world as if Grace had moved the receiver away from her mouth, had the mouthpiece pressed to her throat or otherwise blocked so that the miles, the distance became more real than a phone conversation normally seemed to Cher. Normally, to Cher, no matter where she might be, the people she spoke with seemed within arm’s reach. Almost.
“I wonder,” Cher said. “what possessed me?”
“Is that sass I read in your voice? I apologize and I get backtalk?”
“You apologized?”
“Of course. Well. I would. You said not to speak of it now.”
“Then let’s not.
“Your father’s here. Shall I put him on?” Cher sorted around in her scrapbook mind for just how “here” her father might be in proximity to her mother and what she came up with was through the kitchen, the laundry room, out the back door and down three steps to the garage where, against the far wall a long workbench existed and a stone-cutting saw with a high stool out in front and her father, Paul Lindegarde, just there, bent forward, goggled up with safety glasses, iPod earphones filling his head with Creedance Clearwater Rival, Van Morrison, The Steve Miller Band . . .
“Maybe. After a while. What do you hear from Sunny?”
“Not a word. Not a peep.”
“She doesn’t know I’m, she doesn’t know what’s happened, that I’m still here, in Greece?”
“You know she doesn’t call much from the road,” she answered too quickly. Too defensively.
“Oh, and like I do?” For an instant, the sarcasm stuck in Cher’s throat like a furball; she fairly spit the words when they came and did not feel better for her ungrateful ways.
“Now it’s your turn,” Grace said. A crisp clarity shot through the phone lines. “Try to be thoughtful, child. Try to be nice. Imagine I’ve earned that same respect you might give to a stranger on a bus. If you will.”
“Mom,” Cher said.
“Oh, come on,” Grace said. “Try.”
