Literary Indulgence

Chapter 12

When I woke the next morning, there was the shape of someone’s name still on my lips. For months, I hadn’t thought of life before Bonnie’s death, a life that seemed now so far from me. In my dream, I had returned to the comforts of that life, where the smallest things made me content – early morning routines before work, the greetings of colleagues, and even the exhaustion I often felt when I finally climbed into bed after a long day. Lying there now, undecided about the day, in a foreign bed so far from home, was not a luxury. I allowed myself to slip back into sleep and searched for the comfort of my lost routines.

“Dana!”

Madeleine, showered and dressed for the day, sat close, a mug of tea held towards me as an incentive to get up.

“What will we do today?” she said. Her voice was sunny but the day behind was not.

“Let’s go home, Mads.”

The mug in my sister’s hand jerked, spilling droplets of tea on to the bed. In slow motion, she placed it on the bedside table. Her hand, still warm from the cup, stroked my forehead. My heart surged with a great longing for the comfort of my mother’s arms, though, in truth, I hadn’t often felt their embrace.

“Is that what you really want?” Madeleine’s question might well have been my own.

I looked beyond her to the overcast sky that was the same as those that shrouded my days in Melbourne over the last few months. It seemed there was no escaping my gloom.

“I don’t know.”

* * *

In the quiet hum of established rituals, we wandered the arcades. Over lunch by the quay, we considered our next move. Going home wasn’t going to resolve anything for me, but I was feeling stifled here as if the sea cut off the possibility of change. Alexander’s news that the stone was not from Kos heralded a sense of closure for my time on this island and I was restless now to move on.

Carlo hadn’t been mentioned during the day, so I was surprised when Madeleine said he had asked her to accompany him to Rome. She had declined and he had left to attend to an urgent matter there – though he didn’t tell her what that was. The mention of my favourite city stirred me enough to consider it and, by the end of the afternoon, with Madeleine in full agreement, we had tickets for Rome, leaving the next day.

“There’s one thing I need to do,” I told her as we headed home to pack. I steered the car back toward the town and drove, for the last time, to the Asklepion. Madeleine waited in the car while I paid for my ticket and climbed the steps to the abaton.

Again, I sat on the retaining wall and closed my eyes to the sun that had emerged from a rain-filled cloud. In my mind I heard gentle singing, a lullaby, and I felt myself lean towards vaporous arms that disassembled before me. My torso continued forward until I was wrapped about my knees in a foetal position. I opened my eyes, suddenly conscious of myself in a public place, only to find my body was sitting upright.

Frightened now, I left the Asklepion for the last time.

* * *

Through the car window, I could see my sister’s lazy stretch. There was something almost feline about her long limbs that moved in elegant flexes. Many years before, when we had taken up yoga together, we shared that same flexibility. Now my muscles were strong from gym workouts, but they were tight and solid.

“How’d you go?” she said as I eased into the driver’s seat.

“OK,” I lied, not wanting her to be concerned any more about my emotional, and now my mental, health. “It was a bit crowded.”

* * *

“So sorrree that you go,” Alexander seemed genuinely sad at our news, but he nodded to me in understanding.

Though I had been impatient to leave this morning, I felt some regret now as I looked around the little taverna that had become almost as familiar as my own dining room, and I would be sorry to leave Alexander; he had become a good friend.

“See you later, Ossies,” he said, as we were leaving, his exaggerated accent softer now than at our first meeting. My impulse was to hug him, and Madeleine did. Alexander blushed and turned quickly from us as if another patron had suddenly called him.

* * *

Despite the bleakness of the day, it was a beautiful night, our last in Kos. Though the air was cool as we walked back to our unit, there had been enough warmth in the day’s occasional bursts of sunlight to heat the oil in the eucalyptus trees by the side of the road. Their scent came as a reminder of how far we had travelled.