Monica was the first to broach an exploration of the potential consequences of Mirella’s arrival.
“Why does she have to sit with us all the time? Can’t she eat at her own table?” she blurted out, completely out of context, while she and Emma were looking for green glass pebbles on the beach. Since Mirella had arrived, if Emma had become sulky, Monica had turned morose. The woman’s presence had made their mother rise from the dead, and they felt frightened in ways that they couldn’t decipher, let alone discuss. Meanwhile, this summer Luca had abandoned them for good, in favor of his new group of teenage friends from Athens; he was to be counted upon neither for solidarity nor for help.
Emma shrugged, pretending not to know the answer to her sister’s complaint, but Monica wouldn’t let her off the hook.
“She is in love with Papà. Otherwise why is she here again, all by herself?”
Emma handed Monica a dark blue pebble. Blue was a rare color. Monica put it in the jar without looking. She persisted.
“Why do you think she came back?”
“I don’t know. I doubt Papà is interested in her.”
“How do you know? He lets her eat with us every day. They play cards at night. They are always together.”
“I think he’s embarrassed that she came back but is just trying to be kind to her.”
“Why should he be kind?”
Emma didn’t answer, which made Monica more anxious and angry.
“Why does he have to be kind? Because of what? Huh?”
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You are screaming.”
Monica lowered her voice.
“Why does he have to be kind to her? She’s nothing to us. She’s just a stranger.”
“Because he’s feeling sorry for her, okay?” Emma said calmly, although she felt this wasn’t the best answer. She looked at Monica. She was as dark as the fishermen, and her curly brown hair hadn’t been brushed in weeks. Her little body had grown sturdy and strong, a bomb ready to explode.
Then one early morning Emma looked up from her yogurt and honey and there they were, the English boys, back on the jetty in their canvas shorts sitting low on the hips, slipping on flippers, ready to dive in. They too had grown up since the previous summer, in that shocking Alice in Wonderland way that happens between the age of twelve and fifteen: they were much taller, sturdier, and their hair had reached their shoulders. She followed the trajectory of their arms and fins breaking the stillness of the water like two dolphins behind a boat till they reached the shore of the island and turned into two tiny vertical figurines, jumping from rock to rock just like the goats.
“What are you looking at?” the father asked.
“Nothing,” she said, smiling at him.
He was such a handsome man, her father, still so young and lanky, his sandy hair falling across his face. He wore a white shirt with a threadbare collar over what he called his Bermuda shorts, the sleeves rolled up to his elbow. No wonder women fell in love with him. He was so quiet, and—by then she could tell from his enduring silences—lonely.
Emma doesn’t remember now how the magic happened. Who said what first, which words were exchanged. All she knows is that the memories of that summer turned into English because that’s what she found herself speaking. It was like an infant going from blabber to complete sentences in just a few weeks, letting the brain do the job in its mysterious way. It came like a flow, an instantaneous metamorphosis she was completely unaware of. All she remembers is that one summer the younger boy was speaking incomprehensible phonemes, and the next—thanks to the Beatles, to Joni Mitchell’s lyrics, to the promise of love?—the same clipped syllables turned into verbs that described actions, adjectives that specified attributes and nouns she now grasped as if in her hands and succeeded in using them all, ordering them in the right sequence to make herself understood.
That summer forever marked the moment when she swam all the way to the island and landed in a place where she could be different from whom she assumed she was. There were so many possibilities. She didn’t know what she was getting away from, but the other language was the boat she fled on.
It turned out that Jack and David longed for company too, and an Italian girl their age was probably an equally exotic novelty for them. David, the older of the two, had deep blue eyes, lighter hair and the look of a melancholic troubadour. He told her she should listen to the Rolling Stones instead of the Beatles and twisted his lips when she quoted from Blue. He asked her whether she liked Pink Floyd, the Doors, Frank Zappa or Led Zeppelin. Emma nodded but didn’t make any specific comment, not wanting to reveal what a beginner she was in terms of rock bands. Jack, the dark-haired one who had spoken to her the previous summer in Kastraki, seemed in awe of his older brother and waited for him to end the interrogation, nodding from time to time. When David was finished, Jack stepped forward and without any preamble asked her whether she’d like to follow them home for tea.
Inside the villa, things were scattered all over the place without logic, as if by a tornado. The kitchen table was covered with breakfast leftovers, potted plants, gardening utensils, masks and flippers, wet swimsuits, baskets filled with tomatoes and onions and stale bread, piles of magazines and newspapers. On the floor there were tools, the wheel of a bicycle, a huge carton concealing a mysterious appliance. An English pop song blared cheesily from a small stereo, and a diffused smell of burned garlic hovered in the air.
The boys’ mother walked into the kitchen barefoot and bra-less, wrapped in a floral tunic. She had a pyramid of frizzy hair, a shining halo of gold. She stroked Jack’s curls, introduced herself as Penny and asked Emma whether she was going to join the boys for tea.
“Peter, come meet lovely Emma!” she sang to her husband.
A balding man with a paunch and a deep tan, intent on digging a hole in the backyard, waved his hand with a musical “Hallo there!”
Emma was impressed by their ease. Nobody seemed to mind or even notice the mayhem, as if this was simply their habitual standard of life.
The boys took Emma to their room—more clothes and wet towels rolled up on the floor—and put a Frank Zappa LP on a small record player full blast, overpowering their parents’ music from the next room. They made Emma listen in religious silence, scanning her face for a reaction. David laughed when she said she wanted to learn how to play the guitar.
“Why you laugh?” she asked.
David blurted out something unintelligible.
“Because you said gheè-tahr.” Jack repeated for her, slowing down the words, his dark eyes holding hers.
“It’s ‘guitar.’ Try,” David said.
She tried a few times, wishing she had never pronounced that word. The feeling of those ungovernable sounds sliding and slushing out of control between palate, teeth and tongue embarrassed her.
“I can’t,” she pleaded.
“It’s okay,” David said. “I like your Italian accent.”
His remark displeased her, because she had no idea she had an accent, and figured it probably made her sound stupid.
“It’s very cool, actually,” Jack added with sudden fervor and smiled at her. Emma blushed, unprepared as she was to receive a compliment from him. It was such a surprise to feel that he could find her interesting.
Then Penny called from the kitchen in a soprano voice and made room on the table for a teapot, toast and butter. Emma looked at a small round jar filled with a dark brown, sticky-looking substance.
“What is this?”
“You don’t know Marmite?” Jack asked, incredulous.
Penny turned from the sink, where she was busy washing something.
“Jack darling, Marmite is a British peculiarity, mostly ignored by the rest of world.”
She came to the table and swiftly spread butter and the brown sticky stuff on a piece of burned toast. She handed it to Emma.
“Here, my love, try your first Marmite sandwich and make a wish.”
Emma bit into it with her eyes closed. The taste was so different from anything she’d ever tried before. The sticky, salty substance married the bitter taste of black tea deliciously. She made her wish. If Peter died of a sudden heart attack, then her father could marry Penny and their life would be filled with pop songs in the kitchen, colorful hippie clothes, Marmite sandwiches and more words in English.