Matt McGowan

The Road to Mylopotas (The End of a Marriage)

 

 

On the road to Mylopotas, there was little vegetation, only sagebrush, tufts of grass and a species of cactus he’d never seen. Occasionally he would come upon an old hut or a white-washed stucco chapel dug into the side of a hill, rocks scattered around it, a little path from the road.

 

That was all. No one passed him, and he passed no one. 

 

The road climbed the mountain and seemed to go on forever because he was driving the wrong vehicle, a low-geared, four-wheeled machine that would have been better on a dirt road or the chat piles he’d played on as a child. But on the pavement, a hard-packed gravel, the all-terrain vehicle would not exceed thirty miles an hour. For this reason, he cursed it, and he cursed himself for renting it, although he had nothing else to do and nowhere to go.

 

Climbing the mountain, he counted switchbacks, but he lost count somewhere after fourth hairpin turn. His brain was foggy from drink of the night before, when he told himself, after listening to the others talk about their travel experiences, that tomorrow he would venture out alone and make an experience for himself, something that he would be able to take back to the people on the boat or perhaps save it for the future, when he was sure to be sitting around a campfire somewhere listening to people talk about the exotic places they had visited.

 

He did not know that he had passed three abandoned homes and two churches with the crosses and the circles before he reached the spiny ridge that separated one side of the island from the other. Here, he could see the beach that he had read about in the guidebook. The man who loaned him the book had taken it upon himself to plan and execute all of their excursions over the past five days.

 

He felt guilty about this, about borrowing the book, because the man’s wife had been flirting with him for five days. They were from New Jersey. That’s all he knew about them. They seemed happy otherwise, but they didn’t talk to each other much, and not once had he seen them touch each other. Which he could understand; he couldn’t remember the last time he and his wife had held hands.

 

It was a small island. If not for the rise in front of him, he could have seen all of it, three hundred and sixty degrees of coastline. To his left, the little village where he had rented the four-wheeler was tucked away in a flatland area at the end of a deep cove.

He looked back to where he had come from and then looked forward to where he was going. He knew it was a long way to the beach, but it seemed like it was right there, like he could reach out and touch it. He thought he could smell the salt of it.

 

She carried four shopping bags to the back door. “Where’re the kids?” she said.

 

“Inside,” he said. “Jamie’s at practice.”

 

“She’s not home yet?”

 

“No.”

 

“It’s 5:45.”

There was the tone.

 

“I know what time it is.”

 

“You’re not picking her up?”

 

“Kelly said he’d bring them home.”

 

“I thought she asked you to take her.”

 

Same tone. Not quite shrill.

 

“She never said anything to me. She must have gone with them.”

 

She sighed and dropped the bags. He didn’t offer to help. Turning around, she climbed the stairs and brought down three more shopping bags.

 

“Have you talked to him?” she said.

 

“Who?”

 

She jutted her head up diagonally, pointing toward the apartment above the garage. He looked up there, as if that were necessary to know what she was talking about. Beach towels hung over the balcony railing. A Tiki torch leaned against the wall next to the door. Through the slats he could see cardboard beer boxes, all empty, some folded, some shredded and torn.

 

“No,” he said. “I haven’t seen him.”

 

“Damn it,” she said. Now shrill.

 

“What?”

 

“He’s gotta get out,” she said. “I thought you were going to talk to him.”

 

“I never said that.”

 

“Yes you did, Mark. We talked about it the other night.”

 

“I haven’t seen him.”

 

“He’ll be here tonight,” she said. “You can count on that. With eight of his friends, right outside our window.”

 

He shrugged. She dropped the bags.

 

“Have these kids eaten?” she said.

 

“No.”

 

“Well what the hell have you been doing?”

 

“Nothing,” he said.

 

“Jesus Christ, Mark.”

 

“What have you been doing?” he asked.

 

“Shopping,” she said. “Groceries.”

 

“Bullshit. You bought shoes and more crap you don’t need.”

 

She walked toward him.

 

“No,” he said.

 

She stopped. She was standing on a damp fieldstone patio covered with moss. Slick. Two days ago, it was three inches under water. Another problem they hadn’t figured out how to fix.

 

“Mark.”

 

“What?”

 

She looked at the patio. A cracked retaining wall leaned toward the house. Water seeped through it. Small rocks and chunks of mortar lay on the patio stones below the crack.

 

“Did you call the foundation people?”

 

“What about?”

 

“That wall,” she said, pointing.

 

“Fuck no,” he said. “Waste of time.”

 

Another sigh. Her dead father’s money was inside the house, tied up in cabinets and sinks, a stainless steel refrigerator and a washer and dryer sitting on four-inch pallets in the wet basement. She had new breasts, rebuilt by a surgeon in Dallas.

 

She walked back to the bags and tried the door. It wouldn’t open.

 

“Damn it. Why’s the door locked?”

 

“No idea,” he said.

 

She looked inside. The kids were watching tv, also purchased with her dead father’s money. She banged on the door. The glass of

it rattled. When the kids did not react, she hit it harder.

 

“Have you looked at the checking account?” he said.

 

She turned and glared at him. Most of her hair had grown back. Her daughter, their youngest, was at the door. He could see her through the glass.  

 

“What?” she said, disgusted.

 

“The account.”

 

“No.”

 

“Well it’s a fucking mess.”

 

Down the hill, the four-wheeler bucked. He wanted it to go faster and pushed it, but it resisted, stuttered. Geared as high it would go, it would not exceed thirty-two miles an hour. There was no neutral. Damn it. The beach was right there.

 

And then it wasn’t. A mountain blocked the view, and now it was easy to think it had been taken away from him. The guidebook described it as beautiful and mysterious. Not many people visited it because it was so remote. No shit.

 

The rocks on the hillside were bigger, some of them half the size of a car. They seemed poised to break from the ground and start rolling.

 

At the end of the second switchback, the beach appeared again, bigger now, the entire length stretching out from one cliff to another. At one end was a right angle. The straight line of the beach intersected perfectly with the line of a ragged basalt cliff. Something about that cliff, its darkness and sawtooth spine, made him nervous, like he was perched over the dark depths of the Pacific.

 

The earth was brown. The sea was impossibly blue, almost cobalt.

 

The road was gray. It hugged the mountain and sloped down to the next turn. Then it bent and weaved and fell into a series of short stair steps before turning again, all along the steep contour of the mountainside.

 

He could see all of this from the second switchback: A rocky island far out in the Aegean. The stark black and white sections of a freighter moving slowly across the bay, smoke rising out of a double stack.

 

That was the only movement and the only sign of the living. He parked along the shoulder, wide at the turn, a safety buffer functioning as an unofficial scenic overlook. When he shut off the engine, there was no sound. Silence. No birds or critters. No cars. The only voices were those in his head.

 

At the bottom of the next switchback, yet another acute angle excavated into the side of the mountain, the road turned and then lined out, going straight across the top of a nearly strip cliff for a long stretch, more than a mile. It was three hundred feet to the bottom. There should have been a river down there, but there wasn’t. Though there had been. At the very bottom, a thin line of trees. The only trees on this arid landscape.

 

In three more miles, he came upon a village that he had not seen from the top of the mountain. He asked himself why he had not seen it. Was it obscured, or had he focused only on the beach? Like almost every other building on the isles, the structures of the village were white and block-like, the windows black, roofs flat. There were rocks on the roofs of these structures, and there were little paths from the road to the buildings. But there were no people.

 

He rolled slowly through the center of the village. Three houses and a combination store café. Next to the latter was a little outdoor seating area with lights strung from the corner of the café to the corner of the nearest house. The patio was made of hewed stone. There was a built-in bench at the rear, but there were no tables or chairs.

 

He pulled over and shut off the four-wheeler. Again silence. He waited to hear something. There was nothing, not even the voices in his head.

 

He expected someone to come out of the store, but no one did. There was no movement or sound. At other places he had visited on the isles, the windows of homes and businesses were open. You could hear occupants talking. But here, the windows were closed.  

The village seemed empty, and yet it did not look like a ghost town. The apparent absence of people looked seasonal. He dismounted and walked to the door of the café. Eyes shielded with both hands, he peered inside. Dark. Vacant. Two tables and seven chairs. A glass case at the far end.

 

He stepped away from the door, turned and looked at the road. Hands on his hips. A heavy loneliness, like nothing he’d ever felt, like a cinderblock slammed against his chest. He walked back to the vehicle, mounted it and rode to the sea.

 

While she was inside, talking to her children, preparing a meal for them, he was gone to the liquor store. She checked a few times, standing at the sink, looking through the window. She did not care that he was not at the table, but she was not happy when she saw that he had returned and was drinking a beer. She waited until the children had eaten before she went back outside.

 

“I’m not going,” she said. “I can’t.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“I’m not going on this trip.”

 

He was anxious, but part of him was happy to hear it.

 

“We’ve spent a lot of money,” he said.

 

“I don’t care.”

 

“I doubt we can get a refund. Not this late.”

 

She shook her head. “I don’t care.”

 

“Well you should. God, what is it? Five thousand bucks?”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I can’t be with you for ten days. That sounds like hell.”

 

He sat with his hands between his legs. He nodded. They didn’t disagree on everything; that did sound like hell.

 

“Well,” he said finally, after a long, awkward silence. “I am. I don’t care what you do. I’m going.”

 

He leaned back, handled the bottle on the table and drank from it.

 

“I thought you were taking a break,” she said.

 

He nodded. “Break’s over.”

 

She thrust her hands off her hips and walked back to the door. Before opening it, she stood for a second under the awning. He did not see that she looked back at him before walking into the house. When she was gone, he told himself he would go to Greece alone. He would find a girl there.  

                    

The road ended at a small gravel lot. He was now about a quarter mile from the village. He turned around and tried to find the road at the top of the mountain. He wasn’t sure.

 

The earth was gray and brown. The jagged rocks sloped down to the sea. It was beautiful and lonely. The water lay beyond dunes and tufts of brown grass. What looked like litter, little pieces of shredded paper, were strewn throughout the grass. He wondered how a place like this could accumulate trash. He could not imagine anyone here, ever. But he was wrong. He walked to the grass and looked closely and saw that it was not trash or paper but rather a strange, dried weed and broken bits of shells.

 

At the end of the footpath between the gravel lot and the beach, there was a small trash container on stilts. It was leaning. High tides had made a sinkhole and dragged it toward the edge. Like a dumb tourist, he walked to the container and looked inside. It was nearly empty, but at the bottom was one of those cigarette packages that remind smokers that smoking kills. This one said just that: “SMOKING KILLS!”

 

His mortality now at the top of his consciousness, he stepped back and looked at the sea. Far away – he had no idea how far – was the large, rocky island. From his view, there were no roads or electricity or even vegetation. The loneliness expanded.

 

The freighter was gone, but far away to his left, he thought he could see a wisp of its smoke on the hazy horizon.

 

He had to force himself toward the water. It was clear and looked strangely white. Reaching the edge, he saw that this whiteness came from small pebbles and more of the broken shells lying on the bottom.

 

He stepped out into the water. It was calm; there were no waves. The edges of the shells cut into his feet. There, at ankle depth, he peeled off his shirt and tossed it behind him. He did not wait to see where it landed.

 

He walked slowly, farther out, deeper. When the water reached his waist, he dove and glided under the surface. He stroked and kicked and glided again before coming up for air. When he surfaced, his head jerked, whipping hair off his face. He looked around. It seemed darker. The monolithic island towered and filled him with dread. He ducked under again and swam back to the beach.

 

After grabbing his shirt, he set off toward the basalt cliff. He decided he would walk the entire length of the beach, from one cliff to the other. Before choosing which direction he would go, he looked both ways – a distance of about three quarters of a mile – and saw no one.

 

The beach was dry. Smooth, round pebbles massaged his feet as he walked toward the cliff.

 

His hangover began to lift. The loneliness contracted.

 

He noticed an object. Although he could not see it clearly, it seemed unnatural. But this was only a sense to him. There was nothing alarming about it; it just seemed out of place.

 

Pretty soon, he realized it was a person, a woman. She was sitting on a chaise lounge near the bottom of the cliff.

 

He walked toward her. Closer to the dunes, he stopped briefly and looked at the sea. There were no other people. When he turned around, he expected her to not be there. But she was.

 

For no reason other than proving to himself that he wasn’t losing his mind, he continued walking toward her. He expected her to fade from view and disappear. She did not.

 

She saw him and reached down beside the chair. She picked up a sandal but then dropped it and brought her hand back up to her lap. It never occurred to him that maybe she thought he would harm her.

 

She watched him approach. They made eye contact, but then he looked to his right. He saw a car parked in another lot, disguised by dunes and tall grass. It looked like an old Datsun, the kind he drove in college.   

 

Still walking, he smiled at her and waved. She smiled and waved.

 

Then he was standing in front of her, in the shadow of the sheer basalt cliff. She was sitting, looking up at him doe-eyed and plain-faced, freckles all over her cheeks. She was wearing a dark brown bikini and there were more freckles on her chest, between the suit straps.

 

“Hi,” he said, nodding, waving again.

 

She nodded too and smiled, but she didn’t say anything.

 

He looked again to the sea. His hands were on his hips. He lifted one arm and gestured toward that way. “Beautiful,” he said. “So pretty.”

 

She looked at the sea and they both stared at it for many seconds. When he turned around and looked at her again, she was still looking at it. And she was nodding. Yes, it was beautiful.

 

But now the look on her face had changed. Her lips were pressed together, and she was frowning in a way that told him she might be admiring the beauty, or she might be sad.

 

Finally, she looked at him.

 

“Where are you from?” he asked.

 

She smiled and nodded.

 

“Right,” he said. “Of course. You don’t understand a word I’m saying.”

 

She smiled.

 

“Well,” he said, both hands back on his hips. “It is beautiful.”

 

He looked at the sea again and then he turned toward her. They looked at each other. She was smiling. He smiled too and then he started walking toward the water. He entered the water and swam. When he came out, she was gone.

 

But he saw her again. She was walking toward the car. When she reached it, she turned around and looked back at the beach. He waved to her. She waved back. Then she climbed into the car and drove away.

 

 

Matt McGowan grew up in Southwest Missouri, primarily in Webb City, a small town founded on lead-ore and zinc mining. He finished high school there and attended the University of Missouri, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history and master’s degree in journalism. He is 47 years old and recently re-married. He has three children and two stepchildren – two in college and three in elementary school. He works as a science and research writer at the University of Arkansas. Before that he was a newspaper reporter. He has been writing fiction for about 15 years. He has written many short stories and completed drafts of several novels. Recently, his stories have appeared in Pennsylvania Literary Journal and Open Road Review. When not writing or working or taking care of his family, he reads, runs, swims, cycles, lift weights, hikes, canoes and kayaks. He doesn’t fish or hunt, and he doesn’t watch too much television.