Cast in Doubt Read Free Page B

discourse. Alicia nearly escapes the categories I ordinarily place people in. Her conversation is often elliptical, and like Roger, she can be sharp-tongued; but she is never as vulgar as he. Alicia is suspicious of Helen, whom she’s had for tea and to whom she has offered piano lessons, should Helen want them.
    I’d like to find out why Alicia suspects Helen and what she suspects her of. But not in front of Roger. And why has Alicia offered Helen music lessons? What happened at that tea?
    The Maori love, Roger is saying, just as we do. The aborigines love as we do. Love, Roger is saying, is universal, whatever form it may take. Alicia interjects liltingly, Yes, dear, but who are we and what do we love? Roger’s cunning eyes take her in joyfully, as if they are, and he is, eating her up. Then he clasps one of her pearlescent hands in his and kisses it. Why, Alicia, we love each other, he says. I love you, dear. Alicia taps the filtered end of her Greek cigarette. She taps it incisively, as if to signal that she is about to make her point. Ever so distinctly she whispers, Roger, I haven’t a clue what love is. Do you want to teach me? Alicia calls his bluff every time, but so gracefully, Roger cannot figure out how best to respond. He has never reviled her with his wicked tongue. I am sure he would like to. Alicia’s mouth asserts her intelligence, curving into a calculated smile that sets Roger back a drink or two.
    Tonight I am annoyed by this charade and bored. Sometimes I don’t mind repetitions, but I always prefer originality. I look toward Helen’s terrace, and this time her head bobs up. She waves her tan arms above her head energetically, calling to me. There’s your Psyche, Alicia says. Perhaps you’d better go to the sweet girl, all alone. Roger howls. Alicia exhales a mouthful of smoke. You two, I say waspishly, are unkind, despicable.
    I am shaky on my feet. The water slaps against the harbor and the blue sky is under my feet as well as above my head. My legs have gone numb again. Yannis helps me walk away from the table. I believe I’m leaning on him coquettishly, like some Southern belle, or perhaps I’m merely an old drunk, a silly aging queer. I don’t care what they think. Sometimes I hate everyone but Nectaria, Helen and Yannis. Yannis is quite solicitous this evening. I wonder what he wants. Or how much. I rest my head on his broad shoulder—he is short but muscular. I thank the gods for my family’s ingenuity which has provided what I have, such as it is. I can keep Yannis and myself. Alicia and Roger are laughing in the background. I simply don’t care.

Chapter 2
     
    Bring me my slippers. Give me my robe. Coffee. Yannis hands these to me sulkily, and as it is early, and as I am barely awake, barely alive, and cannot face an argument with a boy a good deal less than one third my age, not at this hour, I do not complain, do not comment on his surly manner. The coffee is lukewarm. I pull myself together, like a shanty thrown up against a storm, and look instead toward Helen’s terrace.
    There she is. She glances up as if I had in some magical way contacted her. She waves her hand above her head and points toward the sea. I suppose this means she is going to go to the beach. And now—at this I lean forward against the rusty railing—she thrusts her arms out in front of her as if gripping a wheel, a steering wheel. She’d like to go for a drive with me. I nod yes and indicate with a flourish of the hands—not this minute, later. She looks down at her book.
    She is a trusting soul. Of course that is the way to get hurt. Presumably she has been. Even a girl that age—twenty or twenty-one—could be indelibly marked by painful events and circumstances, blown by misfortune and regret this way and that. Or bounced this way and that. I don’t know which I prefer. The coffee is cold and my hands are numb. I don’t feel the cup between them. A bad sign. Not like chicken entrails spilled on