Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [15]
After the first year, Eudoxia had advised that they move their conversations from the telephone to the (Greek) coffee shop equidistant from their two apartments. Initially Lena had paid the sixteen dollars plus the price of coffee and the occasional pastry, but about a year in, Eudoxia started refusing her money. And for the past year Eudoxia had insisted on picking up the tab every week because her husband, a police officer, had retired with his full pension and gotten a job as a security guard at a shoe store. Lena had offered to help Eudoxia practice her English part of the time to make things fair, but Eudoxia wouldn’t hear of it.
Wednesday at four o’clock, Lena walked into the coffee shop as she always did and spotted Eudoxia, perched in their regular booth. No matter how early Lena got there, Eudoxia always got there first. Eudoxia jumped up and hugged Lena. She was fat and soft and droopy where Lena was tucked in tight.
“You are excited about something,” Eudoxia declared in Greek.
Lena kissed her cheek and replied in Greek. “How do you know everything?”
The waitress appeared, another Greek transplant with dark teased hair. Lena saw her more often than she saw her dearest friends. “Just coffee for me today,” Lena said in Greek, exactly the way Eudoxia always said it. Lena was a fairly gifted and subtle mimic. She was so used to copying Eudoxia’s expressions and rhythms that she had begun to suspect she spoke Greek like a sixty-four-year-old lady from Salonika.
After Lena got her coffee she unleashed the big news. “I am going to Greece.”
Eudoxia bowed her head and whacked her palm on the table, as she did when she was excited. When she lifted her head her curly hair was still bouncing and the coffee cups were still quivering in their saucers. “That is wonderful. When?”
“Twenty-eighth of October. Tibby planned it. She bought the tickets for all four of us so we could be together.”
“Tibby?” Eudoxia knew about all of them. She talked about Lena’s friends as though they were hers.
“Yes, Tibby.”
Lena secured her cup while Eudoxia whacked the table again. “In Greece! How wonderful. How wonderful.”
“I can’t quite believe it.”
“Nor can I.”
“I didn’t know if I should accept. It’s a lot of money and everything. But I emailed Tibby and she said I had to. She said I was doing my part offering the house.”
“You’ll all stay in your grandparents’ house in Oia?”
“Yes. It’s still empty. My father keeps pledging to go over there and sell it, but he hasn’t found the time. And with the economic climate over there the way it is …”
“Maybe he likes to keep it.”
“No, I think he likes to sell it. You should hear him complain about the taxes and the upkeep.” Lena touched her saucer and considered for a moment. “But I don’t think he wants to have to confront all their old stuff and not know what to do with it. He hates not knowing what to do.”
“That will fall to you, then.”
Lena nodded. “Maybe so.”
One of the good things about Eudoxia was that her life overlapped with Lena’s in no way other than these lessons. She was like a therapist or a bartender. Lena got to represent her world exactly the way she chose without needing to balance it for fairness or fearing that her words would make their way around in some distorted or uncomfortable way.
Eudoxia sipped her coffee. Her face was thoughtful.
“Has something happened to Tibby?”
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t seen her. You barely talk to her. You say it wasn’t always like this. Why do you think she has planned this?”
Lena prodded her backpack under the table with the toe of her boot. “I think she just misses us and wants to be together.”
“You think that’s all it is?”
“What else could it be?”
“I don’t know her. I couldn’t guess,” Eudoxia said honestly. She called the waitress over and ordered a cheese Danish with her customary look of relief and surrender.