In Between Frames Read online

  “Do you suppose there’s a prince in Greece, mummy?” Mabel asked.

  “I suppose,” Sam said. “Greece doesn’t have a royal family, like England, but perhaps there are princes who come and visit.”

  “Can we see one?”

  “Well, first we have to see if there are any,” she said.

  Mabel began kicking her feet under the table. She picked up the menu, carefully sounding out the Greek letters until the words clicked. Sam tried to concentrate on her phrase book, but she couldn’t help but be a little jealous at the ease with which her daughter was reading the language. And then she wondered, What the hell am I doing here, in a place where I don’t speak the language, don’t know a single person, probably can’t even send my daughter to school? And after another moment, Am I completely daft, that I didn’t even think about this beforehand?

  And she was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that she had no plans that she could follow. She’d wanted to get a typewriter and write that novel she’d been planning and plotting intermittently for several years—but that wasn’t a plan. She didn’t know the first thing about what to do to convert her tourist visa into a resident’s visa, for instance. And how would she feel if she needed her daughter to help her understand Greek? And would Mabel even be able to make friends here?

  In an instant, all of the self-assurance that she’d felt on the flight here became undone, and the clear light that she’d so admired about the Greek climate suddenly seemed smoggy. For the first time, she was overwhelmed by the strange letters on the sides of the buildings, the constant shouting in the streets, the insane manner in which cars avoided each other. Oh God, what have I done? She took a moment to marvel at her idiocy, because otherwise the sheer hopelessness of her situation would overwhelm her and she could not cry in front of Mabel, not here.

  At that moment, she heard something—a click. It didn’t seem to come from any particular direction, but she found herself looking around anyway, wondering what had made that noise. Maybe it’s me, she thought, and then decided that it had to be her, because the hopelessness that had threatened to drown her had vanished. She could look things up online. The British embassy in London would be able to help her. She had the papers to prove that David had bought the little cottage. It would be all right.

  “Come on, Mabel,” she said, leaving her money on the table. “We’re going to go back to the house, and then tomorrow we’ll head to Loutraki. And everything will work out, you’ll see.”

  They stood up to go. For a moment, her step faltered, as the seeds of doubt attempted to attain a firmer grasp. But she shook her head, refusing to let them sway her resolve. The words “Keep calm and carry on” came to her mind. If her grandmother could rebuild her life from the rubble, there was no reason why she, Samantha Wilcox, who had more than rubble, couldn’t do the same.

  ~~~

  Gary came over the next morning. Miles was doing his breakfast dishes when he heard the car crunch over the fallen branches on his driveway. Gary Milner was his publishing agent—eternally hyperactive, the kind of guy who had to be reminded that calls at 2 a.m. were not okay, even if they were really good ideas. Still, he was a good guy, and good at finding obscure publishing houses that were open to Miles’s ideas, like a book about what immigrants cooked, complete with recipes.

  Miles hadn’t gone back to his darkroom since he left it yesterday. He was actually, strangely, afraid of the strange picture he’d printed—what if it were still there? What if it had changed back to the picture of the budding leaves? He was still trying to convince himself that he’d imagined the whole thing.

  “Hey man,” Gary said, as he let himself in.

  “Morning,” Miles replied. “Coffee?”

  “Nah, I stopped at this cute little joint in Amherst. They make the bitching-est cappuccino ever. I swear. You really oughta go try it,” Gary said, as he plunked himself down on Miles’s sofa. Miles poured the remaining coffee of the morning into two mugs anyway, and looked in the bread box. One stale cinnamon roll left. He picked it up and put everything on a tray, and went to join him.

  “Thanks,” Gary said, reaching for the coffee. “Anyway, I came to tell you the good news: Random House likes the ‘stranger in a strange land eating even stranger food’ pitch. But they’re not keen on paying you to go to Europe to shoot it.”

  “So what did you tell them?”

  “I told them that you would be happy if they paid to schlep your gear there.”

  Miles sighed. “And what did they tell you?”

  “That you could schlep your own gear. They’ll cover the plane tickets and one Eurorail ticket.”

  Miles had to grin at that. He raised a mug, and Gary clinked his coffee against it. “To the future, man.”

  “To the future. How much is the advance?”

  “Two grand.”

  “Fantastic.”

  They sipped at their coffee in silence for a while, letting the triumph of getting a publisher and an advance sink in. It almost cancelled out the creepiness of the strange print. Then Miles said, “Hey Gary, would you do something for me?”

  “Sure, what is it?”

  “Come look at something in the darkroom with me.”

  “You still have one of those?” Gary asked, as he got to his feet. “That’s so wicked. I didn’t think anybody still did photography old-school any more. I never knew you did stuff like that. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  With Gary rambling at a hundred questions a minute, Miles led him outside to the shed. Gary was even more impressed—Miles didn’t think that was possible—but when they got in and Gary sniffed the scent of developer it was as if he’d just snorted a line of cocaine. “Man, I should have your job,” he said, enthusiastically doing everything that Miles didn’t want: touching things, moving bottles and trays, playing with the enlarger, sloshing the liquids around.

  It was a good thing that he had Gary with him—by the time he had contained the situation, he was too exasperated to feel the heeby-jeebies anymore. He unclipped the mysterious photograph from the line—it was still there, the woman was still reading her book, her child still drinking from a teacup—and showed it to him.

  “Not bad,” Gary said. “Not something I could sell, unless maybe as part of a travel book—are you going to write one of those? Because I’ve got this idea—“

  “No, Gary,” Miles said. “I wanted you to see this—“

  And now what? Tell him that it appeared on a new strip of film when all you did was take pictures of the stuff around you? He’ll just think it was photoshopped, or that you’re lying, or both.

  “Why?” Gary asked, genuinely puzzled. He took the photograph from Miles, turning it around, pursing his lips. “She’s pretty. Is she someone you know?”

  “No, that’s the thing…I don’t remember taking this picture. I was trying out my new camera, see—“

  “Oh sweet, is that it over there—“

  Gary reached for the Leica, and Miles, with a sudden possessiveness of a man who’s just discovered buried treasure, snatched it away before he could reach it. “Please, Gary, this is a $5000 camera.” You shouldn’t lie, but he didn’t feel bad about it, because Gary was wowed into stillness, for once.

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway, I was trying it out—“

  “Was the film already in the camera?”

  Miles sighed. He really should have known better than to ask Gary about this. “Y’know what? Never mind. I’ve got a few cold ones in the fridge,” he says. “Let’s go celebrate that advance.”

  It always amazed him to watch Gary’s face go from being utterly crushed to ecstatic. As they head inside, Miles made a mental note for a new project.

  ~~~

  It took two hours, but finally, Sam and Mabel got off of the bus at Loutraki, a small seaside village west of Athens. Like many small Greek cities on the coast, the view when they got off the bus was that of a sparkling white city and an even sparklier, blue sea behind it. Mabel
took a deep breath, and Sam took courage at the sight of her daughter’s contentment to ask a nearby shopkeeper how to best get to the cottage that David had bought. It was late in the afternoon, and his was the only place that was open in that part of the small town. He was used to strangers asking him where things were, apparently, as he took one look at her and didn’t even bother trying English. The pantomiming and the absurd gestures started to wear away at Sam’s newfound confidence, but eventually she finally understood: the address was about three miles away, along the shoreline somewhere.

  “Taxi?” Sam asked, and pantomimed driving a car just to be sure the shopkeeper understood.

  Another eruption of Greek, only this time it ended with the man putting up both his hands, saying, “Wait, wait.” By this time, Mabel had wandered into the street, and Sam was desperate to get her daughter before she wandered into traffic, but when she made a move, the man became insistent.

  “No, I understand, it’s my daughter—“ Mabel floundered, trying to point to Mabel’s little head of brunette curls bouncing dangerously close to the curb.

  “Stephan!” the man screamed, making Sam and Mabel both jump. After a moment Stephan, a man, thirty-ish, wearing a stained canvas apron, came out from the back of the store. Sam somehow intuited that the man was telling his son to get the car and drive her to their cottage. She tried to protest, but the man dismissed her with a good-natured grumble. After a moment, a slightly-dinged Prius appeared at the curb, and Stephan humoured Mabel by pretending to be a coachman. “Your carriage, milady,” he said with an exaggerated Cockney bravado, as she got in.

  “Thank you very much,” Mabel said, getting in. She buckled her seat belt without having to be told, much to Sam’s relief.

  “What are you doing in Loutraki? Dead man’s village, see?” Stephan asked, as he started the car. They glided down the hill towards the ocean, and Mabel shrieked happily, as if they were on a roller coaster ride. Sam’s stomach also lurched as they sped up, but just when she was certain they were going to careen into the sea, Stephan began feathering the brakes.

  “I’m moving here,” Sam said. “My late husband bought a house here, and we’ll be living in it for a while.”

  “If I may,” Stephan said, “you are one crazy lady.”

  Sam shrugged. “That’s what they all say,” she said. “I do make a bitching lemonade, though.”

  Stephan laughed, but after a moment he realized she was being serious. “You will need Greek lessons, then?” he asked.

  “That would be useful,” Sam admitted. “I’m not too keen on Greek. And Mabel, too—“

  “Kids are easy,” Stephan said. “I teach kids all the time.”

  “Oh? You’re a teacher?”

  The conversation flowed easily the whole way to the cottage, and for the next hour, while she and Sam put their suitcases away. It felt, to Sam, like a splash in the ocean on a hot day, or a rare day of sunlight during an English winter: someone who didn’t know how much David had meant to her, how much it hurt to lose him, how tired she was on England, how much she missed the sun. He was himself, not someone who wanted to be her confidant, her good sense. He helped them wipe the dust off of the ceiling fan and turn the mattresses, and told her to run the water for at least five minutes, full blast, in order to clear the pipes. She took stock of the pantry—a few tins of fruit, bottles of water, and an inexplicable package of raisins. She frowned, wondering why David had bought them—she and Mabel both hated raisins.

  “You must let me give you something,” she said, “when things were in order again.” “I do not like raisins, except when they are covered in chocolate,” Stephan laughed, when she presented him with the raisins. “But I will take some water, and the peaches, if you don’t mind. It is a long way back to my father’s.”

  She let him take the tinned peaches and three bottles of water. She walked him out, and then stood in the doorway with Mabel, waving good-bye to him as he pulled away.

  “Mummy?”

  “Yes, Mabel, what is it?”

  “I like him.”

  “Me, too, sweetie.”

  “Can you make him come back?”

  And for a moment, Sam imagined him standing in the kitchen, frying eggs for their breakfast the way David used to, wearing David’s white pants to the beach, holding Mabel’s hand as she squeals with joyful terror as the waves wash over their feet. It was strange, though—much though she liked the man, she didn’t think he fit their lives like that. He felt more like the adventurous fling, or the good bachelor friend who’d show up for barbeque and beer and chat up all of her friends and maybe even talk one into going home with him—and they’d have a one-night stand, share the juicy details about each other to their friends, but it wouldn’t last and they wouldn’t hold it against each other. Stephan was not a man she saw (yet) as a father, the one who comforted Mabel when she scraped her knee, or helped her with the dishes after a long day.

  She was wondering how to tell Mabel that when her daughter said, “I mean, I don’t want him to be my daddy. But maybe he could be your friend, so you won’t get too lonely.”

  “Oh Mabel, sweetie,” Sam whispered, picking up her daughter. She pretended to smell Mabel’s hair, so that the girl wouldn’t see her cry. But she was pretty sure her daughter knew.

  Part II

  The business of settling in was the same everywhere: go to the “city”, which Loutraki, for all its resorts and the blustering false sophistication of the shopkeepers there, could never be; fill out paperwork. Wait a few weeks. Fill out more paperwork. Inquire, in broken language, where to make copies of the passports, and be sent to a small library which doesn’t have a copier. Learn that copiers can be found in the supermarket a mile from where you live. Sam began to understand why her parents, who moved from France, to the US, then to Laos, then Nigeria, and finally to England, were always grumbly for the first three weeks anywhere.

  It finally felt right to don colorful clothing, now that she was away from England. She’d packed a variety of blouses and camisoles and Capri pants, sandals and one pair of stilettos, but about half of the items were black, or gray. She considered trading them in, but they were all expensive labels and if she wanted to get a job eventually, it might be nice to look a little more formal. But she did tuck them in the bottom drawer of the dresser, unsure of what to make of her relief that she didn’t have to compete with David for space.

  It was a week before Sam and Mabel went back to the shop where they first met Stephan. The Ionides kept a convenience shop, selling small packages of food, maps, the weekend editions of foreign papers, and some cheap souvenirs, key chains and the like, emblazoned with imitation-Hellenic script. Sam had been to Greece often enough in the past to know that the proper way to go about arranging for Greek lessons was to not do it properly, and in their conversation that first night, Stephan had told them that he’d done university in London, studying history. His English, at any rate, was decent enough that Sam wasn’t too worried about him corrupting Mabel.

  “I’m looking for Stephan. Ste-phan,” Sam said, to Jon Ionides. He looked at her, frowning for a moment, but he called his son all the same. Stephan, at least, was happy to see them, and after a brief argument with his father, he led her and Mabel outside.

  “What was that about?” Sam asked.

  “He is worried that you ruin me,” Stephan said, laughing. “My parents are old-fashioned.” He tucked his chin into his throat, and continued, in a false baritone, “You must marry a Greek woman. Someone who understands our faith.” He shook his head, and said, “Funny thing, but they have not been to church in years.”

  Mabel giggled, and pretended not to notice her mother glowering at her. They walked down the hill slowly, no destination in mind, just following the laws of gravity and the blue of the ocean. Things seemed possible in this place—but unlikely.

  “I wanted to know if you were serious about Greek lessons,” Sam said.

  Stephan gave her a measured look
. He’s trying to see if I’m flirting, Sam realized, keeping her face carefully neutral. Her grief was still too raw to consider dating again, and she knew that, if she started, everything would be tainted by David’s memory. It was not how she wanted to start a relationship. If he was even interested in one, with her.

  “That depends on the price,” Stephan said. “For you and your daughter, I teach for good food and a bottle of wine.”

  “Be serious,” she said, laughing in spite of herself.

  “I am serious,” he said. “You know what it’s like, having a degree but can’t find work? In this shithole country, in this shithole town, it drives a man crazy.”

  “Ten euros an hour,” she said.

  “Twenty.”