“Sit! Sit! Tell me everything,” she said.
I told her what I had learned about the saint and she said, “Oh please! When I was a schoolgirl, the teacher would call roll. She’d say, is Spiros here, and twenty boys would raise their hands!”
“Well, do you believe the stories about his shoes?” I said.
“Why not? This is Corfu! The home of mythology and truth. Now, do you feel like a sandwich or a salad?”
I looked at the menu and saw it was heavily influenced by Italian cuisine.
“I came to Corfu to see Asian art and eat Italian food!”
“That’s the way it goes these days. But believe me, you’ll eat plenty of Greek food before you leave here!”
We ordered lunch, which came quickly, and I ate like I had not eaten in weeks. Kiki was telling me more about Saint Spyrídon between bites. Prayers to the saint resulted in the failure of an invasion by Turkey. The Turks had fifty thousand troops on the ground and a good number of ships surrounding the island. It was 1716, and Saint Spyrídon appeared in front of the troops holding a raised sword in his right hand. Never mind that he had been dead for almost fourteen hundred years. The Turks were so terrified, they ran for their lives. The governor of Corfu once wanted to do something to honor the Orthodox saint. A visiting Roman Catholic cardinal suggested that it would please the Almighty if the governor would build a marble altar in Saint Spyrídon’s Greek Orthodox church where he could say a Latin Mass. Naturally, the governor agreed. The materials were gathered and they were ready to begin the conversion of the church from Greek Orthodox to Roman Catholic. The islanders got into an uproar because they considered this to be an unthinkable blasphemy. The governor was outraged that the people should question his judgment and authority. So the people prayed to their saint for deliverance, and deliverance they got. Saint Spyrídon began appearing in the governor’s dreams telling him to back off. Saint Spyrídon brought about a storm so powerful that the lightning bolts exploded the powder keg at the Old Fort and killed nine hundred Roman soldiers and zero Orthodox. The remains of the governor were found crushed between heavy beams, and the cardinal’s body was found in a sewage ditch, holding on to his—well, there’s no nice way to put this—family jewels.
“Boom!” I said. “So much for those guys!”
“Exactly! The stories about him are spectacular, but I tell you, everyone who lives on Corfu believes them. They believe every single word. He is a very powerful saint.”
“Well, it certainly gives you hope about the hereafter being a reality. What else did he do?”
“Oh, all sorts of things. During his lifetime when he was saying Mass, people nearby reported hearing a huge heavenly choir in the church. But when they went inside to see who was singing, there was only Saint Spyrídon and a couple of members of the congregation. Do you want dessert?”
“Baklava?”
“Of course! But we’re going to get fat.”
“I’ve been craving it. You can’t get this in South Carolina. Saint Spyrídon. Wow. No wonder my mother loved this place so much.”
Kiki smiled at me. I could read her mind. Well, almost. Maybe if I could understand all the reasons my mother loved Corfu so deeply, I would somehow have her back with me. Instead of pushing Greece away as I had for years, I would begin to embrace it again, the way I had as a child. There’s not a whole lot that’s lonelier than being a motherless child. Discovering Corfu might give me some new roots.
“My mother is about to explode with excitement to see you. You might want to catch a nap before tonight, because I can tell you they’re going to have you up until all hours.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” I said.
The mere mention of the word nap was making me sleepy.
Kiki dropped me off at the house and said she would pick me up at seven that evening. I thanked her and waved as she pulled away from the curb.
To my surprise, there were packages piled up at the front door of Yiayia’s house. I picked them up and went inside.
What in the world? I thought and dropped them on the dining table.
They were gifts! Exactly as my grandmother’s friends and neighbors had done when I was so very young, some very sweet people had come around to the house to welcome me with a few little surprises.
I began to open them. There was a purple hand-sewn silk cover that held a pack of tissues with a signed greeting card. Very thoughtful! I couldn’t have told you what that card said for a million dollars. But I wrote a description of the gift on it. I’d get Kiki to help me decipher and to thank the right people. Then there was a set of beautifully embroidered dish towels that someone had spent hours working on. Someone else had brought a tiny, pretty, blue and white ceramic pot with rosemary planted in it. I ran my hand across the needles and smelled it. I loved rosemary. Next I unwrapped a homemade loaf cake filled with fruit and nuts. It would be a wonderful treat for breakfast. Someone had brought a box of butter cookies topped with pistachios that smelled amazing. Finally, I opened a flat box that contained a pretty scarf, blue swirls on white, like the water that surrounded the island. I made notes and looked at all these thoughtful things and realized that one of the many things I was missing in my life was a sense of community. The quietude of living in the country had become almost complete isolation. The boys were gone. Our pets were gone. Well, if I went back to Adam—and it was awfully strange to even think of my situation in those terms—I was getting a dog. And maybe I’d spend more time at Wild Dunes. Like, a lot more time.
I stretched out on the bed and looked at the ceiling. What did I want? Well, that one was easy. What I wanted was for this never to have happened. I was pretty sure I couldn’t turn back the clock. Did I really want Adam to be free to see Eve? Well, he was going to anyway if he wanted to. It wasn’t like I had him on a leash. Should I tell him to do whatever he wanted to? Hell, no. It would be much more interesting to watch and see what he would do than to give him permission or a mandate. My great disappointment was based on the fact that I’d been living with a man for all these years who really loved somebody else. That broke my heart. My lesser disappointment lay in the fact that he placed his wants and needs too far over mine. I would never be so submissive again.