by Alex A King
Her inevitable gloating is going to drive Vivi insane. Eleni will throw an I Told You So party, with a special You Should Have Listened to Me and Married a Good Greek Boy cake.
And Vivi loves cake.
2
MELISSA
MELISSA TYLER DOESN’T CARE if he is the most popular guy in school; Josh Cartwright is the biggest jerk-off in the universe, which is really saying something, because the universe is (allegedly) infinite.
“Your dad's a cocksucker, Tyler. I bet you take after him. Come on, show us.”
Josh Cartwright and his posse of dickless friends didn’t care that they were in the gym and everyone was listening. That was kind of the point. Everything those guys do is for show; you can’t be important and popular if no one is watching.
“How come you never told us your old man's a faggot? I'm pretty sure he was checking my ass out when he sold my folks our house.”
“Bite me,” she had said, volleyball in hand, the rest of her team waiting on her to serve. It was so like Josh to make up bullshit to get a reaction.
“It’s true,” he called out across the gym. “I saw your dad blowing some homeless guy in Midland Park last night.”
Everybody turned around and stared, like Josh was talking about her.
“You're full of crap,” she said.
“No way. I couldn't make that shit up if I wanted to.” He appealed to his grinning buddies. “Hey, the homeless need blow-jobs too. Your dad's not a just fag, he's a fucking humanitarian.”
“Josh, language,” Mr. Hector called out.
Josh flipped him a peace sign. “Think about it, Tyler. Was your dad home last night around nine?” He held a fist up in the air, jerked it. “Guess you're living proof homos can have kids.”
“And you're living proof that a person can talk through their asshole.”
Melissa flipped him off just as Mr. Hector looked over.
“Tyler, detention!”
And that's the main reason Melissa hates Josh's guts. The others rate way lower than that.
“Josh is cute, but he's got rocks in his head,” Tonya said when Melissa caught up with her in the library. “He's projecting his latent homosexual tendencies onto other people.”
Tonya is Melissa’s best friend, so she’s supposed to say stuff like that. But Melissa could see she had doubts, like she was trying to convince Melissa Josh was lying, without really believing it herself.
Which is why Melissa is typing “gay parents” into Google. That and she’s quietly freaking out. Josh was right about one thing: Dad was out late last night. And Mom and Dad aren’t exactly the smoochy types. Some kids are always half bragging, half repulsed because they caught their folks pretending to “wrestle” on a Saturday morning.
Not Melissa. She’s never seen her parents do more than peck.
Weird, right?
Tonya's parents are always chasing each other around the house; Melissa has even seen Tonya’s dad slip her mom the tongue. It was weird but also kind of cool, in an “Ewww, look at the sweet old people!” kind of way.
Thousands of results pop up in the browser, but Mom’s done with the yard work, which means she might be coming this way. Dad is gone, too – but not really. From her window she can see he’s parked a few feet back from the STOP sign at the end of their street, talking into his phone.
The front door slams. Melissa’s search history goes bye-bye while she thinks about what to do next. They were arguing on the lawn, and when Mom and Dad argue, Dad always leaves. Paperwork is always his lame excuse, but now she’s thinking about Josh effing Cartwright.
She has to work fast.
Melissa’s bedroom has two windows, one at the front of the house and the other overlooking the side. It's totally Hollywood, but there really is an old oak tree in the yard, with fat branches that brush against the siding. Her mother is always nagging Dad to trim them, but he never does. They creep along the walls, scratching with their nails, when it’s windy; make Halloween noises when it’s dark. The tree’s sounds used to scare her when she was little, but now she hardly ever hides under the bed on a windy night.
After shimmying down the tree, it’s a breeze to get her bike from the shed and ride down to the huge bush on the street corner. Five minutes later, Dad inches past in his silver Lexus, barely pausing at the STOP sign.
Good thing it’s November and the sun goes to bed early. A month earlier, no way she could hide.
Melissa peddles hard, churning fast enough to make her lungs sting. Sidewalks fly by. She keeps her eyes on the silver sedan.
Then the car signals right. Dad turns down a side street. The Lexus drops to cruising speed. Sweet (lung) relief.
Dad maneuvers the car up a short sloping driveway that leads to a neat beige house, a whole lot like chez Tyler. She hunkers down behind some bushes across the street. Dad must be selling this house.
Josh is wrong. Her parents love each other. So what if Dad works late a lot? Loads of parents do.
Right?
Dad gets out of the car, ear to his iPhone. Face all lit up like a Christmas tree, his walk ten years younger. She’s watching a stranger, some thief who pick-pocketed Dad’s face. He hardly ever smiles now.
Does he hate them so much that he can’t smile?
The front door yawns. It’s a deep, shiny black. Her saliva dries up, her stomach goes sour. A man steps out, younger than her dad, but dressed in a similar suit. Another real estate agent? As the men approach each other, she’s dead certain they’re going to shake hands, all businesslike. But she’s totally wrong.
Hug. No handshake.
Her skin is flashing hot and cold, pulse banging pots and pans in her ears. Their lips are moving, but she can’t hear them over the sound of her horror.
The younger guy pulls out of the hug. Now – now they'll break away. They're just friends.
But, no. He plants a kiss on Dad-who-isn't-Dad’s lips. Dad-who-isn't-Dad kisses back, like it feels good, like they’re on a date. Then, arm in arm, they walk into the house, an old married couple.
She shoves her coat sleeve down her throat, all the way to the dangly thing at the back, and murders her own scream.
3
MAX
TWENTY TIMES.
Twenty-one. Not even noon and his phone is blinking an urgent red. He tilts the face until the numbers swim into focus.
Mama.
Again.
Twenty-two.
Max’s parents gave him a boxful of fate while he was in the cradle, some thirty-four years ago. The cradle, passed down through the Andreou family line, had been his father's before his. Christ on His cross looked down from the carved headboard, keeping watch over Max’s mortal soul. He watched patiently and tirelessly while Max overcame colic and infancy.
The way Mama tells it, Max’s lungs were so strong, his screaming so loud, his father worried endlessly that his first son would become a pop singer.
Unacceptable.
Each week his father would light a candle, praying to Christ and the Virgin Mary that it would not be so; his oldest son would go to an English university, before returning home to become a doctor and raise a family of his own.
Expectation is a heavy load to dump on a kid. Better men than Max have fought expectation and lost. Greek culture was built on the backs of children following their parents' word. The world has changed, but older generations are still stuck in ancient mud.
Change, in Greece, takes time.
Max is the good son. Mama loves to tell him this. He took his place at Oxford and began a love affair with medicine, according to the plan. His younger brother Kostas was more daring. He defied the plan, and chose the love of God over law.
Then Kostas ripped out their hearts and shit on them when he entered the priesthood before he chose a wife, destroying any hope of grandchildren. Now the burden to continue the Andreou name is on Max’s shoulders. His younger brother’s strength is both an inspiration and a steel cage.
But . . .
Life is good.
Work is satisfying.
Max has money.
He dates lots of pretty women – some of them more than once. Sometimes they break his heart a little. Sometimes he breaks theirs.
Last night, the Fates snapped the leash. The three sisters, who measure the lives of all men and women at birth, shoved him to his knees with one voicemail.
“Maximos, I have found you a wife,” Mama crowed.
Delete.
He doesn't want or need a wife, and he doesn’t want or need Mama to find one for him.
And now she’s calling him at work.
She knows the rule: Never call while he’s on duty, unless it's a life or death emergency.
Q: But does she care?
A: No.
He ducks into his Spartan office, hits 2 on speed dial, waits for a connection he doesn’t want.
“Maximos,” his mother says, before the phone completes its first ring. “There is a girl I want you to meet.”
A girl. Why not a woman? He outgrew girls a long time ago.
“Forget it, Mama.” He peers around the door. Time for morning rounds and the other doctors are gathering outside the pediatrics ward. Last night he admitted a three-year-old with gastroenteritis, and he’s eager to check on her progress. “You can't call me at work like this.”
Mama is a bulldozer. “I called last night and you didn't call back. And I thought, ‘Max is lying dead in a gutter somewhere.’ You have no idea how much a mother worries. When you have your own children you will understand. My heart, it can't handle all this worry.”
She pauses for him to agree.
“Mama, I'm too busy to meet anybody.”
“No! You must. Her mother is my very good friend. I promised her you would marry her daughter.”
“Call her and tell her no.”
“Oh, Maximos. After all we do for you? Your father and I sacrificed everything our whole lives for our sons. We survived earthquakes and the rule of that madman Papadopoulos so we could give you a good future, and how do you boys repay us? Kostas goes to the church to become lovers with Christ. He broke my heart. He broke your father's heart, and look how it killed him! It will be my fate to die alone with no grandchildren, and the family name will be no more. Every day I tell the Virgin Mary she should have given me daughters. They are much more obedient. Daughters would have given me many grand-babies!”
She comes on like the hundred-handed Briareos commanding an ocean storm. Max is tired. His defenses are low. So, he folds.
He owes her.
He owes his father.
Perhaps the time has come to settle down. Besides, what harm could it do to meet this girl? Worst case, they’ll hate each other on sight and there will be no wedding. Who knows, maybe he’ll find her attractive, and they can have some fun before going their separate ways. It’s been three weeks and counting since he got laid.
“Okay, I'll meet her. But I'm not making any promises.”
“You will like her. She is very beautiful and clever – a paralegal. She will be a good wife for you and you will make beautiful babies together.”
Translation: she has two legs, all her own teeth, and can read without moving her lips.
“I'll try. But if the hospital – ”
“Always with the emergencies! What happens if I die before I see my grandchildren? That is an emergency. It is bad enough that your father left us before he could see you married. Come, make an old, sick woman happy.”
The woman isn’t sick or old. She’s as cunning as a fox and twice as manipulative as any politician.
This is nothing new.
“If you don't come home for the holidays, I'll die,” she told Max when he left for Oxford. Mama’s toolbox is filled with what-ifs and veiled threats.
Time to compartmentalize.
He shuts the office door, and with it, their conversation. His boots squeak on the freshly waxed linoleum. Most days he doesn't hear it, but the ward is quiet after a busy winter of pneumonia and bronchitis.
A passing nurse smiles up at him. She’s cute. It makes him happy when women find him attractive, even when they aren’t attractive to him. There’s no sign of gray in his hair, and his skin, once pale from British gloom, is now a healthy light gold. He’s tall and he stays fit – a habit he acquired during his two years of compulsory national service. Finding a pretty woman for relief and fun has never been a problem.
But Max rarely shits where he eats, so he keeps the smile professional and grabs his patient's chart. Test results: E-Coli negative, which means it’s probably garden-variety stomach flu. He crosses himself, hopes she has improved overnight.
“How is Toula today?”
Better. He can see for himself, but he wants to hear it from her mother.
The tired young mother smiles. “She's stopped vomiting.”
He mirrors her smile, warms the stethoscope with his hands. The toddler's heart beats steady. Her lungs are clear. She giggles when he tickles her under the chin with one finger. A healthy flush has replaced last night’s pallor.
“That's a lot of progress. It means the medicine is working. And the diarrhea?”
“Not since dawn.”
“Good.” He makes his notes while he’s waiting for the nurse to take Toula's temperature. Almost normal. “Keep up the ice chips, and when lunch comes give her a few bites and we'll see how she does. I'll be back this afternoon.”
Next, it’s one of his regulars, a teenager with beta thalassemia. Kids like Vassili don’t make enough hemoglobin. Hemoglobin hitches a ride on red blood cells to make its regular oxygen deliveries. Symbiosis: hemoglobin needs red blood cells, which need hemoglobin. Less hemoglobin means fewer red blood cells, which means anemia, an enlarged spleen, increased chance of infection, and heart problems – if you’ve got it bad. Neither of Vassili’s parents has the disease, and none of his five siblings show any symptoms. He’s one of the luckier ones: no heart problems and no bone deformities. Regular blood transfusions are keeping his motor running.
Max sees them all the time, these losers of the genetic lottery. They’re scattered all over the Mediterranean.
The teenager waves when he sees Max. “Hey, Doc, think the girls will like my new gear?” He thumbs at the I.V. as the technician adjusts a bag of deep red blood.
Once again, Max warms the stethoscope between his hands.
“The scars will impress them more. Girls like men with mysterious scars.”
Heartbeat steady but rapid. All that damaged blood is a strain on his heart, and it’s gridlock in his spleen. “How do you feel?”
“Tired. But not too tired to check out a hot girl.” He grins. Good looking kid; Max hopes he won't let the disease hold him back.
“That's normal before the transfusion, but you know that by now.” Max straddles a chair. When was the last time he had just sat? Anytime his backside is in a chair, he has papers to read and files to update.
“Doesn't mean I have to like it,” Vassili says. “I really want to finish the whole football season.”
“You planning on playing for the Superleague?”
“Hell yeah! If my body will cooperate.”
Fingers drumming the chair, considering the options. “We could move your treatment up to three week intervals, see how you do.”
“What about the iron?”
Most kids don’t read the literature the hospital gives them, and parents don’t always force the issue. The dark is a nice stress-free zone for their kids. What he sees is the opposite: children who understand what they’re facing fight harder. Vassili’s parents gave him the straight facts, and it helps that his Google-Fu is mighty. If anyone finds a cure, Max bets Vassili will know it before he does.
Anyway, the iron problem. More transfusions mean more iron. But these days there’s a pill for everything. Chelation is just a pop-pop-pop away. Those extra iron molecules get a one-way ticket to the kidneys before the bladder spits them out. Downside is, iron levels
drop and white blood cells right along with them, if you’re not lucky.
Sometimes medicine is the art of picking the poison that does the least harm for the most comparative good.
“We’ll need to monitor your white blood cell count. That means more needles. Still want to change your schedule?”
Vassili thinks about it for a moment. “I’m tired of being too tired for football. Let’s do it.”
“I’ll clear it with your parents. Hang in there. I expect to see you playing for a Superleague team.” Max claps him on the shoulder before moving on.
Rare day. Not only is there time to eat, but there’s time to leave.
He chows down a slice of kaseri cheese and bread without interruption, but his hands are shaking. Good thing he’s not a surgeon.
Quick jog down the stairs to the parking garage. The Jeep his mother hates is waiting there. The engine comes alive, jolts out into the city street.
The mountain is waiting.
* * *
Lots of tiny villages dot the sides of Mt Pelion – all of them SUPER ADORABLE (always in capitals) if you’re a tourista. But there’s only one Church of the Holy Mother. The whole place is underground, hiding in the rock’s cool gut. Outside, there’s a door, a crucifix, and that’s it.
Blink and you’ll miss it.
The Holy Mother isn’t an elaborate church by Greek Orthodox standards. Not nearly gold enough. Greeks love to cake their churches in the shiny stuff. No such thing as too much. So the Holy Mother is an anomaly. Simple village above, simple church below. Perfect symmetry. Inside it’s close to silent. Nothing except the faintest plinks of an underground spring. Anemic lighting, almost all of it coming from a few thin candles pressed into sand. This house of God is the most peaceful place on Earth.
It’s hypnotic.
Max steps inside and lets the sudden coolness take him.
He’s not devout, but he’s Christian enough to keep his soul out of boiling water. Dark head bowed, he pays homage to the portrait of the Virgin Mary and her infant Christ, in the Orthodox way: with a kiss.
A male voice slices through the dim light.
