The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides [110]
Everywhere they ate, the food was lukewarm. Moussaka and pastitsio, lamb and rice, fried potatoes, okra in tomato sauce—all were kept a few degrees above room temperature in trays in open kitchens. Larry began ordering grilled fish, but Mitchell, loyal to memory, continued to eat the dishes his grandmother had made for him as a boy. He kept expecting to get a nice hot plate of moussaka, but after his fourth slice in three days he realized that Greeks liked their food lukewarm. Simultaneous with this realization, as if his previous ignorance had protected him, came his first stomach troubles. He fled back to his hotel room and spent the next three hours on an oddly low toilet, staring at that day’s edition of I Kathimerini. The photographs showed Prime Minister Papandreou, a riot at Athens University, police firing tear gas, and an unbelievably wrinkled woman whom the photo caption identified, impossibly, as Melina Mercouri.
The Greek alphabet was the final defeat to him. At twelve he used to sit at his yia yia’s feet, her golden boy, learning the Greek alphabet. But he’d never gotten past sigma and now he’d forgotten everything except and .
After three days in Athens, they decided to set out for the Peloponnese by bus. Before leaving, they stopped at the American Express office to cash traveler’s checks. First, however, Mitchell inquired at the General Services window for any mail being held for them. The woman handed Mitchell two envelopes. He recognized the flowery cursive on the first envelope as his mother’s. But it was the second envelope that made his heart jump. On the front, his name and the “c/o American Express” address had been typed on a manual typewriter in need of a new ribbon. The as and s in his surname were nearly inkless. Turning it over, he read the return address: M. Hanna, Pilgrim Lake Laboratory, Starbuck #12, Provincetown, MA 02657.
Quickly, as though the envelope contained profanity, Mitchell stuffed the letter into the back pocket of his jeans. In the line for the tellers’ windows, he opened the letter from Lillian instead.
Dear Mitchell,
Ever since we got the condo in Vero Beach, your father and I have been “snowbirds,” but this year we can really claim the title. On Tuesday we flew “Herbie” all the way from Detroit down to Fort Myers. It was pretty fancy, flying in your own private plane, and the whole trip only took six hours. (I remember when it used to take us twenty-four hours by car!) I enjoyed watching the country pass by far, far below. You don’t fly as high as in a real airliner, so you can really see the terrain, all the rivers meandering this way and that and, of course, the farmland, which reminded me of one of Grammy’s old patchwork quilts. I can’t say the trip was very conducive to conversation, though. You can hardly hear a thing over the engine and your father had his headphones on most of the time, in order to listen to the “traffic,” so I had no one to talk to except Kerbi, who was in my lap. (I just now noticed that “Herbie” and “Kerbi” rhyme.)
Your father pointed out the sights to me along the way. We flew right over Atlanta, and over some big swamps, which made me a little anxious. If you had to land there, there would be nothing for miles and miles but snakes and alligators.
As you can tell from all this, your mother wasn’t exactly a model “co-pilot.” Dean kept telling me to stop worrying and that he had everything “under control.” But the plane ride was so bumpy it was impossible for me to