A Room in Athens by Frances Karlen Santamaria

Author:Frances Karlen Santamaria [KARLEN SANTAMARIA, FRANCES]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780977614288
Publisher: Tatra Press LLC

Receipt from Madame Kladaki’s Maternity Clinic for 4.000 drachmas ($150), for baby delivery and post-birth care.

There was a loud chorus of good-byes. Marina and Angela saw us to the car, grinned, and kissed the baby good-bye.

Awkwardly, I stepped into the cab, holding Joshua in the pink-and-blue checked blanket Liesel had sent. How strange—he was ours now. We had claimed him from Marina and Angela, with our tips, perhaps.

The car started, Arno laughed, we careened through Athens with the sunlight, the brilliant sunlight, hitting the backs of our necks. He dozed in his swaddling clothes and blanket. I looked out on Athens settling down for its interminable afternoon. The three of us—two of us no longer—together; out there, a foreign, unknown city—a great adventure about to begin.

“I’ve got all the furniture from Liesel,” Arno said. “And I’m really knocked out. I was up all night reading Dr. Spock.”

I looked at him, pleased and touched. “I thought it would help if I knew something about it, too,” he said.

Suddenly, I felt it would all be all right. He would nurse and sleep, nurse and sleep. Somehow, he would be bathed and changed and dressed.

As we entered Kolonaki, I could see the old men drinking coffee and playing cards in the small café next door to the fruit store. It was good to be back. In the short two weeks this had become home. We turned up Karneadou Street; there were the men wiping off cars with the pink feather dusters, the porters taking their chairs in for the afternoon, the long, peaceful time of day, lazy and unconcerned. We smiled at each other and at him. It would be good. I could barely wait to get inside the door.

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