Chapter 2
Alex
Eleni said she’d take a few hours with Mamá so I could have a break and go to see Nancy at the pharmacy. I wasn’t sleeping and needed something to help. Parkinson’s Disease made my mother impossibly irritable, and she lashed out at me every time I’d insisted she do her physical therapy.
“Alex, you have no idea how a woman’s body works,” She scolded me after slapping my hand away when I tried to rotate her leg. “Let me do it myself and get your scratchy hands off me.”
My mother still hadn’t forgiven me for going to work for the diplomatic corps straight out of college—-the government, her sworn enemy. In my naive arrogance I thought I could help make change from within.
But she was right, it was exhausting and futile.
My dynamic mother had always been an advocate for “Grass Roots” movements.
She’d been called a radical and put on an FBI watchlist for cavorting with the group who wreaked havoc at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, resulting in seven of her comrades getting arrested.
She never slowed down after getting married and having us. There are photos of her in the 1980’s with me on one hip and her fist in the air protesting nuclear bombs and the Iran-Contra affair. She was hard-headed and a bit of a man-hating feminist, making our relationship strained on many levels.
My woman troubles continued with Maria, my last lover, who didn’t tell me she was married. I ended it over a year ago, but she wasn’t keen to give me up. She’d come around every time she and her husband got in a fight wanting me to be her emotional support penis.
My sisters were constantly bickering with me. They were just as tired and overwhelmed as I was with my mother’s illness and the many responsibilities she’d taken on like the pharmacy, volunteer fire brigade and community leader, now falling to the three of us.
With all the female rage around me I sought out more time with James and we’d become good friends.
But I wanted to make sure moving to a small island with spotty internet and sporadic deliveries would be agreeable to his lifestyle.
It wasn’t for everyone and could be unnerving at times, seeing the same faces over and over, the same conversations, and an overwhelming feeling of isolation from the rest of the world.
Oh, and the winds, even the most stable human could be tortured by the winds here.
I liked it though now that I was getting older.
I could finally take time and write the book that had been in my head for years to my mother’s chagrin.
She wanted me to go into the leadership role that she was getting too old to maintain.
It’d been the lifelong argument between us.
I was a dreamer and an artist and a poet, not a leader.
I’d told James about the expectations my mother had for me and he was wonderfully empathetic about it telling me about his stepfather, a real British Duke, who just wanted to be a mother to him and his siblings and tend to his vegetable garden, not play the part of society patron his station dictated.
Instead of discussing marriage and weddings, James and I drank too much Raki, and he told me about his mother who was going to be visiting for the Orthodox Easter weekend.
“Just a warning about my mum,” he slurred holding up his long aristocratic finger. “First off, she’s American. From New Orleans. She can be quite intimidating.”
I chuckled. “How do you mean?”
He sipped his liquor, and I could see he was deciding what he was going to tell me.
He sat silent for a while, then adjusted his seat and shot his small glass of firewater all the way down, slamming the glass on the table.
“Okay, well, she’s a—-warrior.” He scrunched up his face obviously not liking his answer. And he wasn’t telling me everything.
“Like Achilles?” I joked.
He bobbed his head from side to side. “Mmm—more like she battled cancer then in her recovery took up several martial arts. She’s got three black belts.”
“Black belts?”
He nodded. “She’s pretty strong and, like I said, intimidating.”
“Intimidating?” I scoffed. “Have you met my mother and sisters?” I chuckled.
“And your niece,” he added and held a newly full glass up to me in a toast.
“You think strong women intimidate me?”
“I was warning you, just in case.” James sipped his Raki.
“Black belts, huh? As in multiple?” I mused.
He ignored my question, “She’s different than the women in your family though.
” He continued. “Eleni is strong emotionally, like she can take on everyone’s weaknesses and hold them up until they can walk again.
And from what I’ve seen of your sisters and your mom they’re the same way.
Well, maybe except your mum, she’s a bit-eh, feral,” He chuckled.
“Amazing women, all of them. But Maggie is—-more.” He waited for my reaction.
“More what?”
He sighed. “She handles things, but wants to do it alone. My father thinks she’s in a reflective phase of her life, trying to figure out what she wants to do and who she wants to be.
And while she’s doing that, she tries to stay out of everyone’s way.
We’ve had a few arguments about her—disappearing acts. ”
“I don’t get it. Why do I need to know these things about her?”
“Because I don’t want your family to think she’s cold or indifferent.
She’s not.” He sipped his drink and sighed.
“I’m like that sometimes too. I’ll shut down instead of seeking out the council of my friends and family.
I’ll try and fix things on my own. I just want you to explain it to Eleni if I have an—episode. ” He smirked.
“Fuck, man. Do you just disappear and not tell anyone? I’m not sure Eleni will put up with that shit.” I laughed and downed my liquor.
He chuckled. “She knows, but doesn’t like it. Anyway, don’t be surprised if my mum is a bit distant compared to your family.”
He stared at me for a few heartbeats.
“She’s scary as shit to some men.”
“Only men?”
“And some women too. Most of them just stay away from her.”
The prognostication about his mother was odd. And I barely gave it any thought, but I hadn’t been prepared for the effect Maggie had on me at first sight. I didn’t see a cold or indifferent woman. I saw a woman who repressed herself. There was storm inside her and I wanted to unleash it.
She was like the “The Meltemi” getting in my eyes, nose and throat, and doing things to my brain. Heat and passion blowing into me, assaulting my senses giving me crazy images, like Maggie on her knees gazing up at me, begging me to do very dirty things to her.
My. Friend’s. Mom. I’m so fucked.
Her not being available to me pissed me off. I couldn’t even speak to her without my throat burning so I didn’t speak to her. But I couldn’t stop staring, wondering what she was thinking.
I had been vicious to her that first night. But knowing I couldn’t have her pissed me off to no end and made me grumpy. I cursed myself at the way I’d acted. But what was I supposed to do with this attraction?
Since I had some time on my hands after the pharmacy and hadn’t enjoyed the spring sunset in a while, I decided to go to Yanni’s Taverna and have a beer.
As soon as I walked in Yanni and his father, also Yanni, came and greeted me with hugs and slaps on the back. It had been a while since I’d come for sunset. God, I missed it. So beautiful from this vantage point.
I took a table in the corner overlooking the small beach where sets of unoccupied of lounge beds sat with their umbrellas closed. In the summer this place was packed every night with tourists coming to drink Uzo and watch the western sky turn orange and purple as the sun set.
“Somebody left this on the beach,” Younger Yanni handed me a paperback of Ken Follet’s “Pillers of The Earth”. “I know you like to read in English.” He added, and he was right. It was my first read language and most dominant.
“Oh, cool,” I said and took the well-worn book. “I like this author.” And with the internet still down, I needed something to do while I wasn’t sleeping.
I’d read three chapters and was pulled into the story so intensely that I’d barely drank my beer and hardly noticed the sunset when a deep voice, sexy as hell, and full of distain ripped me from a surprisingly intense scene.
“That’s my book,” Maggie said scowling at me.
The wind. It’s her and her voice just seared me.
The very thought of this woman in my proximity, on my island and mother to my good friend was infuriating.
“Oh, I didn’t know your real name was Ken Follett,” I snarked.
She exhaled in complete frustration.
“What is your problem with me?’ She asked.
Direct hit.
I could tell her that I wanted to see her luscious lips wrapped around my cock, but I’d probably get a heel in my foot like poor George did. Or maybe even worse.
I could just get up and walk away, or I could let it go and ask the thousand questions I’d wanted to ask her since I’d laid eyes on her in her low-cut dress and spectacular tits.
Stop it Alex, she’s your friend’s mom, for Christs sake!
I leaned back in my chair and pretended that her question wounded me. My hand placed on my chest I faked a gasp.
“You stomp on my friend George’s foot; you demand my only form of entertainment, and you insist I’m the one with the problem?”
Her smirk was everything I wanted, she’d caught my game, my relentless sarcastic banter that I hoped to be more like fore play.
“You want the book? How’re your negotiation skills?” I waved the book. I was trying to tease, trying to flirt, I had no idea if she was picking up what I was throwing down, I was still being a kind of a jerk—or—maybe...
She took the seat across from me and leaned her chin on her interlaced fingers. I wanted to suck on them.
“I’m old enough to be your mother,” she said with a wicked grin.
I leaned into her hands and gazed down at them then up to her eyes. “You would’ve been twelve,” I whispered.
“So? I got my period at twelve and—”