by Alex A King
Melissa is sprawled out on the patio, flipping through a magazine. The words are for her, the pictures for Biff.
Vivi’s scraping her espadrille along porch’s edge, her back flat against the support post. She’s alternating between balancing a bag of frozen peas on her nose and draping it with a vinegar soaked cloth.
“You have proof of nothing,” her husband says.
Vivi looks at her father and remembers the box. Now she knows it was the test Nitsa sent. Mystery solved.
“But – ”
“Eleni, leave it alone. The woman is dead.”
“Yes, and that is a good – ”
“Eleni!”
Vivi says, “Nitsa’s lovely. If you speak out against her mother now, you’ll only hurt her more.”
Eleni scoffs. “Just put that ice on your nose and be quiet. The swelling will go down faster if you do not speak.”
“Now that I think about it, Nitsa was always a good girl,” Thea Dora says, without lifting her head from her crochet.
Melissa looks up from her magazine. “Do I have to call her Thea?”
“Of course not,” her grandmother says. “She is not your aunt.”
Vivi doesn’t bother pointing out that everyone here calls everyone Aunt or Uncle or Mr. or Mrs. if they’re more than five or so years older. “You'll have to ask her what she wants you to call her,” she says.
“What is the world coming to? My daughter is a traitor.”
“Nitsa has no one,” Vivi says, “and I like her.”
“Then she should get married,” Eleni says.
“Not everyone wants to get married,” Vivi says.
Thea Dora lowers her crochet. “Why not? All women want to get married. It is the natural order of things.”
Vivi waves. “I'd just like to point out that, except for Melissa, getting married didn't work out too well for me.”
“Yes, but you married a pousti,” her mother says. “It will be different when you marry Max.”
Thea Dora jumps up. “Vivi, you are getting married? We must celebrate!”
“Sit back down, Thea. I'm not getting married – to Max or to anyone else.”
“If you're sleeping with him you must marry him,” she says. “Eleni, are they doing the sex?”
Time for Vivi to crawl under the porch and die. “Mind your own damn business,” she says.
Eleni says, “I think so.”
“Be quiet, Eleni,” Elias says.
“About Sofia I will be quiet, but we are discussing Vivi's sex life now.”
Oh really? How about no?
“By the way,” Vivi says, “Nitsa’s coming over this evening.”
109
VIVI
SHE FINDS TAKIS SITTING beneath an olive tree, smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes.
“Did they put her in the ground yet?”
Using her foot, she kicks away the rocks and sticks, and then she sits beside him, cross-legged. “Tomorrow.”
“Good. Even in that tree, she was starting to stink. July is a witch. But August will be a bigger witch.” He nods at the purple-green patchwork on her face. “Wrestling donkeys again?”
“More like a gorilla.”
He grunts. “I hope the gorilla looks worse than you.”
It hurts like hell, but she smiles.
Takis says, “What have you got to smile about?”
“Everything, apparently. Turns out I'm pretty happy here.”
She expects questions, but what she gets is laughter. It starts with a chortle, than erupts into a guffaw. Then he’s coughing all over the place, spraying the parched air with wet flecks.
“You!” he says, once his spluttering stops. “I never knew a xena could be so funny. You should have seen your face when the donkey kicked you. You wanted to cry, but you didn't. And look at you now. Someone kills herself on your land, your mother goes to jail, you go to jail, you take a beating from your cousin, and what do you do? You tell me life is good.”
“You forgot the part where my ex-husband is gay and my daughter tried to kill herself.”
He laughs again, and Vivi laughs, too. Yeah, it’s been the year from hell, but she survived, didn’t she? They survived – she and Melissa. That’s got to be worth at least a few cosmic brownie points.
Takis stands, squashes his cigarette. “Get up, Xena. We have work to do.”
“More cheese?”
“You want cheese, we will make cheese. But not today. Turns out you are strong, like these trees of yours. The world gave you rocks and dry dirt, and still you survived. Maybe you even grew a little, eh?”
She holds out her hand for him to pull her up. “Are you saying you're going to help me?”
“No, I'm saying that I'll teach you what I know about olives, then you can help yourself.”
110
VIVI
IN THE END, VIVI stands behind Nitsa as she commits her mother to the ground. St George’s bells have been weeping all morning.
They’re all there: Vivi, her parents, Melissa, and Thea Dora.
Most of the town is there, too – partly out of morbid curiosity. But Vivi is there because she cares.
It’s been three days since the police ruled Sofia Lambeti’s death a suicide, but Vivi and her family are still the hot gossip.
Eh, it won’t last. Soon enough there will be fresh meat. Someone will steal a goat, flash a tourist, and the great gossiping mouth will swing away to chew on the fresher story.
Eleni is on her best behavior. She’s managing to ratchet her melodrama from Gabor down to Mercouri. Vivi’s father is same as he always is; with no woodwork to do, he’s betting ten euros here, ten euros there, on the Pro Po, always favoring his beloved Niki – the local pro soccer team.
Melissa is beautiful in her black dress, her long golden hair tied back in a low ponytail. School’s not far away now. Her scars will fade. A year from now, no one but Vivi will remember how close she came to losing her favorite person.
Melissa isn’t alone, and neither is Vivi. Max is beside her. Tall, strong Max. He’s here – his choice.
A somber situation, yes, but every so often he looks down at Vivi and smiles.
It’s real, what they have. He is for her, and she for him.
She knows it with as much certainty as she knows they belong in Greece.
His mother is coming for dinner tomorrow night.
111
VIVI
THE KID IS ALONE in the front yard, busy with a broom. Greek boys know if their mama says, “Sweep,” they better sweep.
“Hey, Thanasi.”
The sweeping stops. First reaction is fear. Kid doesn’t look so tough now, so adult, so cocksure. His inner child knows he fucked up big. He slaps on a smirk, but it’s wrapping paper; Vivi already caught a glimpse of what’s in the box.
“One day you might have a daughter,” she says. “Then you’ll know.”
112
SO MUCH CHANGE IN the family.
Vivi was talk of the town for five whole minutes when Max moved in. Not to be outdone, Effie kicked her husband out, moved her girlfriend in, and lost fifty pounds. Max gave Vivi an engagement ring and Effie shaved her head.
When Vivi’s business grew wings, and began exporting olive products to gourmet markets in the United States, Effie was filming the first season of Greece's Top Hoplite. Thank you, Nitsa Lambeti.
Effie won.
They invited her back as a judge for Season Two. Greek viewers love to hate her. German viewers love to love her.
113
MELISSA
MELISSA OFFERS HER WRISTS to the sun, lets it see what’s left of the pale bracelets she carved there so many months ago.
“It’s funny, I can hardly see them, now.”
“The scars?”
Melissa nods. “I thought they’d always be there. Like an expensive souvenir from my first summer in Greece. It’s only been a year and a bit. Next September they’ll be all the way gone, Max told me.�
��
Dr Triantafillou says, “You almost sound sad. Will you miss them?”
“Not enough to make new ones.” Her smile comes easy. The girl doesn’t have to work at it, now. Things have changed, the way things inevitably do. “Olivia left – did I tell you?”
“No. What happened?”
“Her parents pulled her out of school last week and they went back to Canada. There’s a rumor going around that she’s pregnant.”
“What do you think?”
“I think people here talk a lot. And sometimes that’s good, and sometimes it’s really not.”
Melissa feels sad and glad Olivia is gone. It’s very Dr Seuss.
“That’s a healthy position to take,” the shrink says, smiling, smiling. Dr Triantafillou has changed, too. Same smile, same a-m-a-z-i-n-g style, but it’s all maternity clothes, now. She waddles to the door, sees Melissa out, and they hug the way they always do.
The T-shirt, the poster, the bumper sticker, the mug, they’ve all got it wrong, Melissa thinks. It’s not shit that happens, it’s change. And sometimes the change is shit and sometimes it’s flowers.
Like the flowers Vassili left for her.
Like the flowers Vassili brings her still.
114
ELIAS – THE FINAL WORD
A MAN WILL DO ANYTHING for a wife he adores. Remember that and do not judge him. Do not judge him when you see Vivi, see Nitsa, and notice the way both women stand, the way both women walk. Do not judge him when you see a picture of his own grandmother and see Nitsa all over her face.
Peace is expensive, eh? Peace is expensive, but it is good. Remember that.
THE END
Wait! You don’t have to leave Greece yet. Stay in Agria with One and Only Sunday, where a fake—and very convenient—coma, an arranged marriage, and a disappearing finger trick kick off the second book in the Women of Greece series.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alex A. King is an American author (by way of several countries, including Greece), who divides her time between writing, thinking about writing, and reading Seuss's HOP ON POP for the millionth time. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family.
Seven Days of Friday is Alex's first independent novel.
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