meeting my mother. Not only shouldn’t I have been surprised, but I also should’ve known, guessed it from his original reaction, just as I should’ve known that the image I held of him had more in common with his paintings than real life. Unlike the first explosion of love, the unravelling was slow, a leak that I constantly scrambled to patch up.
My mother arrived, and I met her at her hotel. After we’d dropped off her bags, we went out into the city, walking to the restaurant I’d chosen for us. We settled in and ordered drinks, and twenty minutes later Hugo hadn’t appeared. My mother suggested we order anyway, that he could order separately later, but by the time our food had arrived, I knew he wasn’t going to come.
“Something must’ve happened,” I told my mom. I used a pay phone out front and called, but he didn’t answer.
I spent the rest of the day with my mother, and she only asked about Hugo one more time and then changed the subject. She asked me if I wanted to stay with her that night in the other bed in her hotel room, but I needed time alone. It was such a minor thing—a missed dinner date—but it was the first time I’d felt betrayed by Hugo. I hugged my mother goodnight and told her I’d come over in the morning.
I wasn’t ready to go home yet and wasn’t even sure what counted as home. I didn’t want to go to the dorm and see Susie and most of my things were at Hugo’s. My mother had given me one of her hotel keys so I had access to the entire building. I took the elevator to the basement, but there was nothing there, so I went to the top and found the pool and gym. The change room was humid and empty and there was a tall stack of folded towels by the door. I picked one up and quickly decided to go swimming. I hadn’t been in months, and felt like doing something that would tire me out. I could go in my underwear; no one would know.
I jumped into the deep end, both arms straight in the air. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that although he knew how to swim, something about moving from Greece to Canada made him forget. He said he couldn’t imagine swimming in a pool or a lake and that even the ocean was different from the sea. When I was younger, I was terrified that I would jump into a pool and it would be the day I forgot how to swim too, but of course it never happened. He was teasing me. When I bobbed back up to the surface I rubbed my eyes and flipped on my back. The pool had a domed white ceiling with a skylight on one end. It was getting dark outside and the skylight was a rectangle of grey among all the white. I floated.
Swimming is one of those things best learned when you’re young. Foreign languages too. You pick up these skills without realizing you’re doing anything special or complex. My parents insisted on swimming lessons, but I never learned Greek. My mother didn’t speak it and my father only spoke it with his family who still lived in Greece. I’d hear him on the phone enough to get accustomed to the lilt of the language, but it wasn’t until after he died that I decided I wanted to learn myself, as if it would bring me closer to him. I sat down with a book called Learn Greek in Three Months , but fell behind when it took me over a week to learn and memorize the alphabet. For hours I would sit and practice writing out the letters, learn the new symbols.
In Greek, there are two letters that make the O sound. There’s omicron, which looks like the English O, and there’s omega, which, in lowercase, looks like a little rounded W. Usually the omega will come at the end of the word, while the omicron will be the O buried in the middle, but this isn’t a hard and fast rule. In my name, Zoe, the O in the middle is omega, not omicron. It’s spelled zita, omega, ita. Ζωη. I remember being satisfied that my short name had two alphabet endings: the English zed and the Greek omega.
After my father died, I would sometimes find my mother crying. The first
My mother arrived, and I met her at her hotel. After we’d dropped off her bags, we went out into the city, walking to the restaurant I’d chosen for us. We settled in and ordered drinks, and twenty minutes later Hugo hadn’t appeared. My mother suggested we order anyway, that he could order separately later, but by the time our food had arrived, I knew he wasn’t going to come.
“Something must’ve happened,” I told my mom. I used a pay phone out front and called, but he didn’t answer.
I spent the rest of the day with my mother, and she only asked about Hugo one more time and then changed the subject. She asked me if I wanted to stay with her that night in the other bed in her hotel room, but I needed time alone. It was such a minor thing—a missed dinner date—but it was the first time I’d felt betrayed by Hugo. I hugged my mother goodnight and told her I’d come over in the morning.
I wasn’t ready to go home yet and wasn’t even sure what counted as home. I didn’t want to go to the dorm and see Susie and most of my things were at Hugo’s. My mother had given me one of her hotel keys so I had access to the entire building. I took the elevator to the basement, but there was nothing there, so I went to the top and found the pool and gym. The change room was humid and empty and there was a tall stack of folded towels by the door. I picked one up and quickly decided to go swimming. I hadn’t been in months, and felt like doing something that would tire me out. I could go in my underwear; no one would know.
I jumped into the deep end, both arms straight in the air. When I was a kid, my father used to tell me that although he knew how to swim, something about moving from Greece to Canada made him forget. He said he couldn’t imagine swimming in a pool or a lake and that even the ocean was different from the sea. When I was younger, I was terrified that I would jump into a pool and it would be the day I forgot how to swim too, but of course it never happened. He was teasing me. When I bobbed back up to the surface I rubbed my eyes and flipped on my back. The pool had a domed white ceiling with a skylight on one end. It was getting dark outside and the skylight was a rectangle of grey among all the white. I floated.
Swimming is one of those things best learned when you’re young. Foreign languages too. You pick up these skills without realizing you’re doing anything special or complex. My parents insisted on swimming lessons, but I never learned Greek. My mother didn’t speak it and my father only spoke it with his family who still lived in Greece. I’d hear him on the phone enough to get accustomed to the lilt of the language, but it wasn’t until after he died that I decided I wanted to learn myself, as if it would bring me closer to him. I sat down with a book called Learn Greek in Three Months , but fell behind when it took me over a week to learn and memorize the alphabet. For hours I would sit and practice writing out the letters, learn the new symbols.
In Greek, there are two letters that make the O sound. There’s omicron, which looks like the English O, and there’s omega, which, in lowercase, looks like a little rounded W. Usually the omega will come at the end of the word, while the omicron will be the O buried in the middle, but this isn’t a hard and fast rule. In my name, Zoe, the O in the middle is omega, not omicron. It’s spelled zita, omega, ita. Ζωη. I remember being satisfied that my short name had two alphabet endings: the English zed and the Greek omega.
After my father died, I would sometimes find my mother crying. The first
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