chapter 12
Gus
“How do you want these organized?” Decca blew out a breath and planted her hands on her hips as she looked at the books stacked high all around the room.
After breakfast, we’d spent most of the day moving boxes and boxes of books into the guest room. It was intimidating, an endless task, but she seemed determined. And I was grateful for the help, even if it did mean a lot of awkward silences, audible sighs, and jumping away whenever our body parts brushed against each other.
“I’ll leave the cataloging system to you, but I’m warning you now, I have a lot more books here than I did at my parent’s house.”
“Good. I need new reading material.” Her eyes lit up as she twisted to grab one off the top of a stack so tall she could hardly reach.
Thank God she’d changed out of that little slippery silk thing she’d worn at breakfast. She was fully covered now, in black leggings and a vintage The Cure t-shirt that reached to the middle of her thighs, her hair pulled up high in a sloppy ponytail. She was just as sexy this way, but I could at least keep a lid on my lust, now that vast expanses of skin weren’t begging to be touched.
Had she bought that pink thing special for our wedding night? If it was designed to seduce me, it fucking worked. I was achingly hard half the morning, knowing that little wisp of satin was the only thing keeping her covered. And it barely did that. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the deep V, parting wider and wider as her belt loosened, threatening to reveal her tits. Her shapely ass jiggled and bounced under the pink silk while she kneaded biscuits on her tip-toes, the muscles of her smooth, strong legs contracting, her bare feet working the hardwoods while she performed the motions.
I’d had to leave the kitchen abruptly. Rudely. I was desperate for a cold shower and pants that would better hide my erection.
When I came back down, only partially sated, things had been weird between us. Me, still insane with desire. Her understandably cold. Maybe hurt.
I opened my mouth, tried to apologize for my… inability to perform last night, but what could I say? Was I sorry because I couldn’t…? Or because I’d almost…?
Decca didn’t deserve some half-assed apology. Our relationship was always going to be strained while we underwent this adjustment period. Until I could keep my cock soft while living under the same roof as her, it was better to keep my mouth shut.
So, I said nothing, and we ate our biscuits and gravy in silence.
“Do you want to add my witchy books to yours? We could probably take up at least three shelves.” Her question jolted me back to the present.
Should we combine our books like real married people?She was asking.
“Uh, well, you probably want to keep yours more accessible. You don’t want to have to come in here every time you want to look something up.”
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a coward.
She nodded and turned away from me, but not before I caught the light leaving her eyes.
With every swipe of the box cutter, she grew more and more distant. Colder. It wasn’t natural for someone who exuded such light, whose inner fires raged.
She kept eyeing the bed like it had committed treason against her. Like she’d never hated anything more.
“Decca,” I said, moving closer to her. “It won’t be like this forever. We’ll figure out how to make this situation work.”
Oh, Jesus, could I have been any more patronizing?
“This... situation,“ she repeated back to me. She jerked back like I’d slapped her, then left the room.
Fuck.
Marriage.I hadn’t said marriage. Consciously, or not, I’d chosen the wrong word, implying our marriage was a thing we’d have to endure rather than celebrate.
As much as I hated it, it was better she find out now.
I’d done it to push her away, to draw blood. I’d brought it out from somewhere deep inside the bad man I’d once been. This was my nature.
I was still a bad man.
Her soft footsteps descended the stairs, slowly fading out as kitchen sounds overtook the padding of her bare feet. I didn’t move, just stood there, listening. To the suction of the refrigerator door as it was opened, the rattle of bottles. The rush of water from the tap and the high-pitched groan when she turned it off.
She was right to leave.
It was best for both of us if we kept our distance. It would protect her from more of whatever she felt now, and it would protect me from the pain of wanting what I might not ever be able to give her.
Our marriage was a promise built on sand.
I’d felt us become one during our kiss on the altar. But last night told a different story. It was too hard to touch her without all my faults flashing before my eyes. I’d never known how to treat women.
I’d known how to look like just enough of a good guy to get them into my bed.
And I got them out of my bed just as easily.
I loved women—their smells and the softness of their skin and lips. Loved the plumpness of their breasts filling my hands. I loved the sounds of their moans and the hitching of their breaths when they were close to coming.
Women had always been on a pedestal for me. Up there. Out of reach. Impossible to truly know.
But as much as I’d loved fucking them, they were toys—very well cared-for toys that I worshipped in bed—but ultimately disposable. Once I had one, I wanted the next and the next. I needed to consume as many as possible, grateful, at the time, for each one, but playing with them for no longer than a night or two. My eye was always turned by the shiny new thing.
Then Eleni happened.
I’d tried to play with a woman who wasn’t mine.
That was the nature of temptation. It definitely wasn’t her sparkling wit or kind heart. It was her newness, the taboo taste of her, the fact that she’d been speaking a language I was fluent in. She teased me, found small ways to touch me, encouraged private jokes between the two of us so we’d have a reason to lock eyes at the family table. I knew she was hard up when she started flat out asking for it. George wouldn’t touch her. Their marriage had already been over. Practically before it even started. George had always been smarter than me.
The temptation was too great. I gave in.
The first time, it was good. Really good. She had skills, techniques, masterful moves. But by the time it was over, my smile was fading quicker than I could get the condom off. A dull ache settled into the pit of my stomach. I was too dumb to realize what it was at first. I thought it was what dad called indigestion. But at twenty-two, not only did I have a sprung cock as soon as any woman crossed my path, I had the stomach of a goat.
It got worse at night. There was a rock in my belly. Or a hole. I wasn’t sure which. I’d lay in bed, rubbing my chest, feeling my own heartbeat, unable to sleep. Fucking was the only thing that relieved the pressure. But the rock always came back bigger than before.
I’d started to think something was seriously wrong with me. I should have realized it was my conscience. Not only was I betraying my brother; we’d had to sneak around the whole family. And we snuck around a lot.
I felt like shit all the time. I was always high or drunk, or both. Whatever cut through the guilt. I had to guard every reaction, every expression. Nothing felt natural anymore. I was paranoid. Anyone could have discovered the affair if they had just glanced at us. She wasn’t exactly being careful.
A couple of weeks after our first time together, George and Dad had gone together for a pick-up. Ma had run to the grocery store. Eleni had been super sweet to me all morning, making careful eye contact over a steaming coffee mug, rubbing my shoulders after I told her I didn’t feel well. She’d laughed and kissed my chest, right over my heart, to make it all better.
After office hours, we’d been sharing a bowl. That was our pretense for getting together. George fucking hated the smell of weed. Wouldn’t let it anywhere near his sacred funereal spaces. He’d only grudgingly allowed it in their apartment, so it always bought Eleni and me a few minutes alone.
“You know where I’ve always wanted to fuck?” she asked, blowing smoke into my lungs through a kiss, gripping my balls hard in her fist. “The prep room.”
“You’re not allowed in there. You’re not licensed.” It was my feeble way of discouraging her.
“Hmm,” she murmured as she bit my lip hard. “Are the cops going to come arrest us? If we’re caught, we’ve got bigger fish to fry than an unlicensed woman minding her own business inside a room in her house.”
She unbuttoned her silk blouse down to her navel. Right there in her kitchen. She hadn’t worn a bra to work in the office, and frankly, that kind of flagrant show was all I needed back then. Sliding the fabric to the side of one breast, she toyed with me. “I can put these away then, if you want.”
“Fuck it. Go downstairs.”
Maybe part of me was trying to get caught. Maybe I wanted George and everyone to hate me as much as I hated myself. It was a cop out.
And I would pray for forgiveness for the rest of my life, for my weakness—not just the cheating, but doing it where the act would be burned into my brother and sister’s memory—because Soula had seen it too. All of it.
A storm had killed the power in the house that night, and the generator hadn’t kicked on. While I was busy pounding into Eleni at the end of the casketing table—jeans around my ankles, balls swinging away—it finally registered. Eleni was talking, and it wasn’t directed toward me. She stared over my shoulder as I pumped and pumped, making no motion to stop me.
Suddenly, the lights flashed on. Two shadows darkened the door. I jerked out of her and turned to the wall, but I’d seen the cold, dead expression in her eyes.
Hatred rolled off her. Not for me, but for my brother.
I’d been using Eleni as an ego boost. But she’d been using me as a .22 blade scalpel to carve George’s heart out of his chest.
I puked on the linoleum. I didn’t even have time to put my cock away.
That was all I could think about last night when I held Decca. Jack and Coke puke running into the floor drain of the prep room. The fluorescent light strobing off the bright, gray-white wall. Eleni’s cruel smile. Shattered images forced themselves into the forefront of my memory.
I didn’t understand it. I’d had plenty of sex after Eleni and I”d never gotten these visceral flashbacks. I rarely even thought about the affair in gory detail.
Last night scared me. It had started out so tenderly and turned into something monstrous. It wasn’t Decca’s dress I was unzipping. It was Eleni’s. Not my wife’s breast I palmed, or lips I kissed, or skin I ran my hands over. It was Eleni.
I’d had to rush to the bathroom to dry heave into the toilet.
My brother’s wife was my rock bottom and, at the time, I didn’t think there’d ever be a way to crawl out.
Maybe I hadn’t crawled as far as I thought.
I’d gotten help. With God and the saints of the faith. With the Church and Holy Tradition. With Father Vasili and Dad.
And when I was prostrate in despair, you raised me to glorify you with your power.
I’d been so certain of my new purpose.
After college and seminary, new friendships, and true reconciliation with George, I was still scrabbling upward. I could see the sun peaking over the edge of the rocky cliff wall and that rock—the same one that had been in the pit of my stomach since Eleni—it had been dissolving little by little.
Now here was Decca at the very top, kneeling down, offering me a hand. Using her strength to pull me over the ledge.
But I couldn’t accept it.
Over the years, I’d gotten a lot of help for these feelings of shame and worthlessness. I’d grown up, and I’d rushed to the church to seek forgiveness, which meant a denial of self and every selfish act.
Sex had always been the ultimate selfish act.
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, Decca left. 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 for settling.
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 our situation might 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 old Reader’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.
Decca had left everything untouched.
Decca wasn’t messy. The bed in the guest room had hospital corners. The bathroom grout was stark white, despite its age. The clothes in her bedroom closet hung straight, with every hanger spaced apart evenly.
I closed my eyes to block out the evidence of her pain, her loss, her grief. This was what was left behind after Granny’s death had left her alone.
Granny’s presence hung over this space like a shroud.
My heart broke for my wife as a greater realization crashed over me.
Iwas supposed to be her family now. That was what I’d promised by marrying her two days ago. I’d already failed her. My own insecurities, my prison of guilt, had only served to reaffirm that all her family left her.
Oh, Decca. My sweet girl. What have I done?
The acid from my coffee seemed to eat into my stomach lining. The black liquid bubbled up in my throat, threatening to spew out on the hardwood floors.
I was a fucking asshole. A selfish, dickless asshole. She’d been selfless enough to entwine her life with mine and I’d been too afraid... of what?
I blew out a long breath. Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a selfish asshole prick motherfucking bastard.
No. No. I wouldn’t be that. I would not leave her. Not in letter or spirit. No matter what, I’d find a way to show her I wasn’t that bad man anymore. We’d find a way into and through this marriage, and I wouldn’t let her regret it.