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So I’d sworn it off. I’d lived an ascetic life.
Now I didn’t know how to reconcile sex with love. Or with marriage.
Or with Decca.
I knew how to be the whore. I knew how to be the monk.
I didn’t know how to be both. Or neither. Or…Fuck.
I couldn’t trust myself not to hurt her.
One touch of Decca’s lips and I’d wanted to take her on the stairs of the solea in front of everyone in the church. Her eyes made me want to kneel at her feet. Her long ponytail, black as a crow’s feathers, made my hands itch to wrap it around my fist, pull her head back and bite her long white neck until it was marked with red. Her tiny body made me crave the feel of her under me, on top of me, made me dream of taking every part of her and leaving her drained from a hundred orgasms.
But it wouldn’t make me know how to treat her the next morning. Or for the next fifty years.
Maybe it would. In time.
But Jesus Christ did it fucking hurt to see her pain, knowing I was the cause.
The next morning, Deccaleft. She thought it would be best if I had some time alone to settle in. She canceled her cancellation of a job on the Arkansas border.
Settle in.As if I had anything to settle. My books and clothes were unpacked. I owned nothing else.
But I needed the time to get my head straight. Pray.
I didn’t want her to see the mess swirling inside my brain.
When she came back in a couple of days, maybe I’d have a better handle on myself. Maybe she’d return, and I’d be a new man. Maybe I’d work through all my Eleni business and sweep Decca right off her feet and into bed.
I’d waited until I heard her keys jingling and the front door close to go downstairs. I hadn’t been avoiding Decca, but I hadn’t sought her out either.
I didn’t trust myself not to try to touch her, only for more flashbacks to start.
I jumped out of bed and threw on the first t-shirt and pair of cutoff sweatpants I could find. Then, I went downstairs in search of coffee.
“Okay. Settle in. Settle in. How do I settle in?” I asked myself aloud, as I paced the floors. That was what I was supposed to be doing. In reality, I had nothing to do. My schedule was blessedly free this week. Plenty of time forsettling.
I wandered aimlessly from one room to the next, looking at what I was supposed to be settling into.
She’d given me a tour that first day I came here for dinner a few weeks ago, when we’d optimistically hashed out how oursituationmight work. But now that she was gone, I was sensing a theme among the spaces she never entered. They were Granny’s.
The kitchen was unavoidably used, but there was still a sense that it wasn’t hers. Decca moved around the room gingerly, not wanting to make noise or disrupt the dust that caked the cookbook shelves.
The dining room had previously only been used to house Barry, her pet headless human skeleton. Now that she’d packed it up and taken it back to her lab, the room was sterile. It contained only a matching mid-century dinette set that looked similar to the one at my Yia-Yiá and Pappou’s house. But instead of gold-rimmed plates and Greek dolls, like Yia-Yiá‘s hutch, Decca’s was stuffed with old, repurposed glass jars filled with what I’d assumed were surplus herbs for spellwork.
It was clearly not a place for celebration. What had holidays been like with her granny? Were they painful reminders of lost loved ones? Times of mourning rather than festivity?
Even in my parent’s mortuary, we’d gone all out for Thanksgiving. When I was a kid, as long as nobody died, we’d invite the Nashville Greek cousins and dad’s sister and brother and his kids, who lived in Chattanooga. The house was plenty big enough and had ample parking to accommodate a giant family. Soula loved getting off the hook from having to play with George and me whenever our cousins came. And as soon as they got over the fact that there might be bodies in the basement, it almost felt like we were a normal family.
I relished those raucous and chaotic times growing up. Was that why Decca clung so fiercely to her friends? Why she’d lay down her life for them? Because she wanted something more than the quiet of her and Granny?
I stepped through the threshold of the living room. I had the horrible suspicion Decca had been lonely here. She’d had Granny, but what about the rest? No brothers or sisters. No parents. No close friendships until college. Raised by a single, elderly grandmother. No wonder she’d thrown herself into academics. No wonder she’d chosen a field that kept her apart from society.
The living room was a reliquary. Like when a museum replicated the set of a beloved TV show.
There was a mash-up of furniture from the 70s, probably bought secondhand in the 90s when they moved here. And some newer pieces—the requisite, old person puffy recliner that actually looked like a great place to take a nap, an Ikea coffee table, and the scattered detritus of things set down temporarily and forgotten. A half-used napkin under one of the coasters next to the chair, tissues tucked between the cushions of the La-Z-Boy, stacks of oldReader’s Digests, reading glasses that I knew weren’t Decca’s, an old tube TV standing on a cabinet in the corner with DVDs of classic films stacked on top.
It was all covered in three years of dust.
