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Carlo spoke Italian His father had co cured leather and Chianti He explained in grammatically imperfect but polite terms that ere both doctors We could not be in better hands, he said For my benefit, later, he’d translated the double entendre By the end of the week, Carlo and the matron were bosom friends In spite of his notorious shyness, whenever she brought us hot tea he would sit up in bed with a shirt on and give opinions on the infertility of her eldest daughter and the lung ail trade I lay beside hi sinful and out of place, like a whore taken home to meet Mother The matron didn’t ask for my opinions, probably because she didn’t believe I was actually a doctor Which I wasn’t, technically I did some work at the clinic-rural Crete was not overly concerned about licensure-but to be completely honest, I was Carlo’s para I learned the Greek words for oil and soap and bread

I know that a woman’s ambitions aren’t supposed to fall and rise and veer off course this way, like soht in a storm All I can say is, at one of the many junctures in my life when I had to sink or swim, Crete was an island, a place to head for, new and far away I had just dropped out of medicine ina licensed MD I’d discovered there was so serious, mainly a matter of nerve and perhaps empathy, that stood into be born feet first I couldn’t think hoas going to tell Doc Homer, and I’ll ad an ocean between myself and that obelisk of disapproval It also helped that Carlo really wanted o with him But I had nolike Hallie’s going to Nicaragua Our village had its own kind of bleakness, the bones and stones of poverty, but the landscape was breathtaking Our classer and Haiti, black lung in Appalachia, while Carlo and I set broken legs on the steep slope of Mount Ida, mythical birthplace of Zeus Poverty in a beautiful place seemed not so much oppressive as sublireat religions, I told rees in the shade, and the burgeoning y I and II took a field trip to the river; our putative goal was to get some samples of water to exa about the plant and aniht down at the bottoae I could easily have collected a gallon of river water ht it in, but the school had no air conditioning and I’h with the kids long enough to prove my point, if there was one, and I was tired of it We all were

I knew the trip to the river would turn into a party I didn’t try too hard to go against nature The tall kid with the skinhead haircut, whose naet wet up to his T-shirt It took about ninety seconds I only drew the line when boys started throwing in girls against their will

"Okay, knock it off, scientists, Marta says she doesn’t want to get wet," I said Marta shot me a lipstick-red pout when they put her down, but she’d shrieked "No" and I felt there was a lesson to be learned here, all the way around

"I’ve got a ton of sa" I sat a safe distance up the riverbank under an ash tree, labeling full bottles as they were brought to ested that they collect shallow and deep water,anything thatinstinct There was a low, grassy island in the middle of the riffle, and several kids were out there on their knees catching bugs and frogs Rayht a six-inch perch with a net fashioned froet around to fish," he said "A fish is an ani with the frogs, into a mop bucket we’d cajoled fro-city school is like, but at Grace High ere flexible about interdepartmental appropriations

Back in the lab, we rounded up all the creatures visible to the naked eye and made a hoe Ping-Pong balls used for some mystical experiment in physics Marta and two other cheerleaders disposed of the Ping-Pong balls and took over the terrarium project They made a pond on one side for the fish, and an admirable mossy island on the other side, co They refused to deal directly with the clients, though Rays (with his bare hands) from the mop bucket