Page 202 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Thalia wrote in one of her e-mails that Mamá was going to bed earlier and

earlier. I take a breath and steel myself. I pick up the receiver and dial.

I met Thalia in the summer of 1967, when I was twelve years old.
She and her mother, Madaline, came to Tinos to visit Mamá and me. Mamá,
whose name is Odelia, said it had been years—fifteen, to be exact—since she
and her friend Madaline had last seen each other. Madaline had left the island at
seventeen and gone off to Athens to become, for a brief time at least, an actress

of some modest renown.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Mamá said, “when I heard of her acting. Because of her
looks. Everyone was always taken with Madaline. You’ll see for yourself when
you meet her.”
I asked Mamá why she’d never mentioned her.

“Haven’t I? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I could have sworn.” Then she said, “The daughter. Thalia. You must be
considerate with her because she had an accident. A dog bit her. She has a scar.”
Mamá wouldn’t say more, and I knew better than to lean on her about it. But
this revelation intrigued me far more than Madaline’s past in film and stage had,
my curiosity fueled by the suspicion that the scar must be both significant and
visible for the girl to deserve special consideration. With morbid eagerness, I

looked forward to seeing this scar for myself.
“Madaline and I met at mass, when we were little,” Mamá said. Right off, she
said, they had become inseparable friends. They had held hands under their
desks in class, or at recess, at church, or strolling past the barley fields. They had
sworn to remain sisters for life. They promised they would live close to each
other, even after they’d married. They would live as neighbors, and if one or the
other’s husband insisted on moving away, then they would demand a divorce. I
remember that Mamá grinned a little when she told me all this self-mockingly,
as if to distance herself from this youthful exuberance and foolishness, all those
headlong, breathless vows. But I saw on her face a tinge of unspoken hurt as

well, a shade of disappointment that Mamá was far too proud to admit to.
Madaline was married now to a wealthy and much older man, a Mr. Andreas
Gianakos, who years before had produced her second and, as it turned out, last
film. He was in the construction business now and owned a big firm in Athens.