The Clover House

by Henriette Lazaridis Power

  But Clio couldn’t deny that the truth was otherwise. Skourtis, in fact, did not work particularly hard. She saw him one day sitting on the woodpile, rolling a cigarette in those long fingers of his. As soon as Vlachos appeared at the edge of the farmyard, Skourtis popped up and began to haul logs into his arms. Clio saw Vlachos squint at him and mutter something before he crouched down, took up four thick logs in a burly embrace, and placed them in the cart. Turning her gaze back to Skourtis, she noticed how unbalanced his load was, even after days of experience, and how he himself still tottered beneath a far lighter weight than what Vlachos had just lifted. Once the cart was full, Vlachos stepped into the yoke and began to tug it across the farmyard toward the kitchen. As soon as he was out of sight, Skourtis sat back down on the pile to smoke.

  She drew her cardigan closed around her neck and stepped outside. Skourtis stood when he saw her coming.

  “Miss Notaris.”

  “Why won’t you pretend for me?”

  “What?”

  “You pretended for Vlachos. I saw you. Why won’t you pretend for me?”

  “Ah.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Because I’m a little afraid of Mr. Vlachos, truth be told.”

  “You’re not afraid of me?”

  He pulled her to him, looking around to see that no one was watching. She stepped back.

  “If I could see you, Lambros, what makes you think no one else can?”

  “Fine. Come into the barn, then.”

  He drew himself up, stretching his arms above his head as if to ease some strain, and strolled around the corner. Clio followed him but remained at the edge of the barn’s dim space, one foot on each side of the shadow line.

  “Why don’t you work?” she said.

  “I have an ailment,” he said. “Weak lungs. Otherwise”—he shook his head ruefully—“I would be in Albania shooting Italians with the best of them. I didn’t want you to know.”

  She cocked her head.

  “It’s true,” he said. He reached his arms out toward her. “Listen.”

  He beckoned for her. She hesitated but then stepped into the barn’s shadow.

  “Here.” He pulled his jacket open and undid one of the buttons of his shirt. He placed his long fingers on her cheeks, turned her head sideways, and pressed her ear to his bare chest. She drew a deep breath.

  “Shh,” he said, and pressed her head closer. “Do you hear it?”

  She had no idea what to listen for. The beating of his heart was all she heard, that and her own intake of breath, as if she were breathing through her ear. His heartbeat seemed so inconsequential, nothing more than a bird’s wing fluttering against a window, his body so slight for all its sudden immediacy. This was the body she would consign to frigid air, to snow, to bayonets and guns.

  “Did you hear it?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He held her head there for a moment longer and then tilted her away. With an apologetic look, he buttoned his shirt again and pulled his jacket tight. He shivered a little.

  “Don’t tell your father, will you? I don’t want him to think I’m weak.”

  “I won’t.”

  Clio wondered what she had heard. A weak heart? Weak lungs? A heart—his or hers—fluttering with the excitement of nearness? She couldn’t be sure. But she couldn’t stop thinking about that moment. The shadow on one side of the barn door, the light on the other, and Skourtis with his arms outstretched, his shirt open to reveal his vulnerable chest. Nothing like that had ever happened to her. The more she thought of it, the more she was certain nothing like that ever would again.

  When Skourtis asked her a few days later whether she would accept his tailoring of a gown, she said yes. The next day, she took the mirror down from the wall in the bedroom she shared with Sophia.

  “Where are you going with that?”

  “Never mind.”

  She couldn’t tell Sophia or anyone about the gown. She felt that to explain it she would have to describe that moment by the barn. Even if she were capable of conveying the moment, no one else could possibly understand.

  She met Skourtis in a small room at the back of the house, bringing first Sophia’s mirror down and then another one from Nestor’s room. She waited until after lunch, when everyone was supposed to be resting, and changed into one of her mother’s dresses, a sleeveless silk in a deep blue that Urania had long ago told Clio could be hers. Together, she and Skourtis set the mirrors up at an angle to each other and placed a small crate before them. Skourtis reached out his hand, and Clio saw again the image of him at the edge of the barn’s shadow, reaching his arms out toward her. She took his hand and stepped up onto the crate.

  “Plenty of extra,” he said, pinching the fabric in at the sides and looking her up and down.

  She turned as he instructed while he sketched lines with chalk along her sides, her neck, and her hem. He made the neckline dip down, the back dip even more but not too much, and turned the shoulders of the dress into three-inch-wide straps. As he worked, first with the chalk and then with pins, his hands skimmed over her hips, her thighs, her breasts.

  “That tickles,” she whispered.

  “Sorry.”

  He crouched to pin the hem and she touched his hair. She wanted to place her hands on either side of his head, as he had done to her. If he stood up close to her, she would kiss him.

  He moved behind her.

  “The zipper will go here.”

  She felt his finger drawing down along her spine, slowly, over each bone. She arched her back as the press of his finger reached down almost to her bottom.

  “Isn’t that a little low?”

  “It’s the latest fashion, I assure you.”

  He spun her around so she was facing the mirrors.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  He reached down into his tailor’s box and pulled up a length of gold braid.

  “This,” he said, holding it up to the neckline, “will make the gown almost as beautiful.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “I don’t know. Around.”

  “Around where?”

  Skourtis shrugged and ran the braid through his hands, flicking his fingers as if water were trickling over them.

  “Lambros, this is my brother’s. You can’t have it.”

  “Don’t you want it for your gown?”

  “Not at his expense. It’s from his Scout uniform.”

  “He doesn’t need it, does he? Anyway, he should be wearing Metaxas blue.”

  She reached for the braid, managing to pull it from his hand. He grabbed at her and then made a sort of gasping groan. She let go.

  He laughed and held the gold braid above his head.

  “I thought you were in pain.”

  “No.”

  “But your lungs.”

  “It’s just for fun, Clio.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but you had no right to take that.”

  “I was only making you look glamorous.”

  “It’s my brother’s.”

  “I confiscated it to give to you.”

  She slapped him. From her position on the crate, she swung across and slightly downward in a blow of some force. Skourtis staggered back, one hand still holding the braid aloft, and the other clasped to his cheek.

  “Now how do your lungs feel?” she asked. “Or was it your heart? I can’t quite remember.”

  He dropped the braid on the floor.

  “You’re a coward and a thief. Get out of our house,” she said quietly. “Or I will find someone to haul you away so you can die in Albania where you belong.”

  Skourtis didn’t move for a moment, and Clio had a flash of fear that he would hurt her. It was clear to her now that he was not frail at all but lazy and scared. Finally, he swept his hair back over his forehead, pulled his sleeves down, and gathered up his things. He closed the door softly behind him. Clio picked up her brother’s gold braid, sat on the crate, and listened to
her heart pounding.

  14

  Callie

  Thursday

  Now, the morning after my fling with Stelios, which is what I have decided to call it, my head is pounding and I have bruises on my hips, my knees, and my left elbow. Sitting in the chair at Nestor’s desk, I can see straight ahead to the hall and to the doorway to the dining room. At some point last night, Stelios made a comment about the dining room table and chairs, whose claw feet were right by his head. “More wealth for my heiress,” he said, running a hand along the carvings. I grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the floor. “I’m not your heiress,” I said. “You don’t own me.”

  “No, but, seriously,” he said later as we were getting dressed. “Do you own this place too?”

  “I told you. I don’t own anything. We lost it all after the war.”

  But now that I have been to Constantopoulos’s office again this morning, that is no longer true. I have signed Calliope Notaris Brown to the Acceptance of Inheritance form, and I have agreed to take possession of everything inside this house. The claw-foot table, the claw-foot chairs, the rug Stelios and I rumpled beneath us, and the vase I held on to so it wouldn’t be shaken to the floor: All these are mine. They are all markers now—of the end of Nestor’s life and the end of something in my own.

  I toy with Nestor’s pen, flipping it around on the sheet of blank foolscap I have set out on the desk. If I don’t do something, I will start to cry—the kind of crying that, like vomiting, shocks you with your inability to control it, disgusts you with your body’s betrayal. It’s not the sex I mind. In fact, what bothers me is the likelihood that the sex is irrelevant to my relationship with Jonah. If we’re over, it’s because of bigger issues than a one-night stand.

  I push the chair from the desk and head into the living room. I need to do something to keep my mind from thinking about all this. There is something here in this house, I am sure of it. I start on one side of the room, looking impatiently through boxes whose contents have now become familiar. After a few moments, I see a small box upside down by my foot. I remember Stelios laughing, reaching behind him for support, and then the feeling of something ticklish, like paper, brushing against my hip. I grab the box to set it right and see beneath it the black feathers from the other day. Crouching, I gather up the rest of the box’s contents that have spilled onto the floor: a piece of dirty white silk, a woman’s ring, a brass-colored bullet, and the four black feathers, which I now see are roughly six inches long.

  So this is the box that my mother has been looking for. But it could easily pass for a box of garbage. While all of Nestor’s boxes contain objects of the same category, this one has no apparent meaning, no system determining what it holds. And yet this one has held my mother’s attention ever since she first glimpsed it. She seems in fact to have recognized it. There is a story here that I have not yet understood.

  I sit down on the floor and concentrate on the contents. Each item leaves me more confused than the last. The feathers lead me to think of the farm, and the silk turns my mind to the city. Again, the silk is dirty, with what look like rust stains on it, and this leads me to question how it could ever connect to a ring with a rectangular topaz stone set into a thin gold band. Then there is the bullet, which seems to cancel every possible attempt at connection. I can think of no way to put these things together.

  If my mother did indeed fall in love with a refugee—with the handsome young man in the photograph—what could these objects have to do with that? Did he give her this ring? Was she wearing that dress? And how did it get so dirty? I picture a teenage Clio rolling in the dirt with a young refugee and shake my head. The image doesn’t fit.

  The phone rings and my ears tingle, as if the sound were a solid object pushing into my head. I go to pick it up, irritated already at the thought that my mother is hounding me.

  “Tí?” I say—What?—before I notice the click and hiss of a transatlantic phone call.

  “Cal?”

  “Jonah.” I exhale a long breath.

  “Your cousin gave me this number.”

  “I’m at my uncle’s.”

  “I know.”

  “What is it?”

  “Well, Cal, I got your email.”

  “Okay.”

  “About what you said, about how maybe it’s not enough—”

  “Jonah—”

  “Just wait. If we stay together, I’ll be happy to listen to anything you want to tell me. I said that when you left and it’s still true. But right now, I have to talk.” He pauses and I force myself to wait. “I don’t like your silences,” he goes on. “They’re not good for you and they’re not good for us. But I love your stillness. Without you here, I feel like I’m making stupid, meaningless noise all the time. You are always so still, so centered. I love you, Callie. And I don’t want to play around anymore.”

  I don’t know what to say. Jonah’s words are so beautiful, so peaceful. That’s the overriding sensation I have, listening to him: peace. But it feels as if that beauty and quiet exist in a glass room I’m not allowed into. Or, actually, a glass room that I’ve shattered with what I did the night before. Jonah’s idea that I’m still and centered seems so wrong to me. So utterly wrong that I wonder how he could love me and not see the truth of who and how I am.

  “Aren’t you going to say something?”

  I know what I should say, but I’m too afraid to say it. All I want right now is to postpone the moment when it all comes apart.

  “I don’t know, Jonah. It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t think we can talk about this over the phone. You’ve had time to go over all this. But I feel like I’m drowning in other people’s lives. There’s so much family stuff to understand here. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, with my mother, and Nestor, and everything. Can we talk about it Tuesday?”

  “I thought you were coming back on Sunday.”

  “I need to stay longer.”

  “Were you planning to tell me, or was I supposed to find out when you didn’t get off the plane?”

  “I was going to call.”

  “Callie, you’ve been gone since last Wednesday and all I’ve gotten since you landed is one phone call and one email. I know we weren’t talking a lot before you left, but I didn’t think we’d gone into radio silence.”

  “It’s busy here. And there’s the time difference.”

  “I know all about the time difference, Callie.” I wince. “I know how that one works. Why do you need the extra days anyhow? What the hell have you been doing all this time?”

  “Don’t swear at me, Jonah.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. But you know, Cal, I’m trying to make a life. With you.”

  “And isn’t that what we said we needed to think about? I told you I want to wait until I get back. We can’t be talking like this on the phone.”

  We are both silent for a long time, listening to each other’s breath and to the crackle of the line.

  “Jonah, you can’t be all understanding about my coming here and taking some time and then get mad if you get to the answer before I do.”

  “Who said I was all understanding?” His voice is weary. “What was I going to do? Stop you?”

  “Jonah.”

  “Yeah?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “We should probably hang up.”

  “All right, Cal,” he says, and his voice croaks with tension.

  “You want my new flight info?”

  “Sure.”

  I tell him the number and the arrival time, and we say goodbye.

  I feel sick to my stomach. I sit there by the phone for what seems like hours, moving only to hug my knees and press my forehead against them. If I could stay like this, it would be all right. If I could never have to make a decision, never have to take a chance like this on another person—or let that person take a chance on me—it would be all right. When I finally do get up, I am trembling
as if Jonah and I have had a shouting match. I look at the clock and see that it is almost twelve-fifteen, which means that Jonah called just after five in the morning. At the thought of him sitting in the dark apartment, just risen from a bad night’s sleep, I feel my stomach churn. I go to the bathroom and wait to vomit, but nothing comes. I deserve this.

  I need to get out. Out of Nestor’s house, out of the city. I am startled to find the air warm outside. I walk fast to Aliki’s house, feeling sweat roll slowly down the back of my neck.

  When she hears my voice over the intercom, she buzzes me in, but I wait and ring again.

  “Aliki!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Come down and let’s go for a drive!”

  “Now? Are you all right?”

  “Come on. It’s warm out. Let’s just go. I need to get out,” I say. “I’m going crazy.”

  “Wait.”

  The intercom clicks off and then back on.

  “Callie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. We’ll leave Demetra at my mother’s and we’ll go. But not for too long.”

  “Fine.”

  We walk the few blocks over to Thalia and Sophia’s apartment, holding hands with Demetra, who swings between us on each rapid step. I try to let the girl’s lightheartedness rub off on me. Aliki lets us into a lobby strewn with flyers and leads the way up two flights of stairs that wind around an old-fashioned elevator shaft. The cage-style elevator drifts down past us with an old man inside.

  “Geia sas, Mr. Stoukidis.”

  “Geia sou, Miss Aliki.”

  Aliki knocks and, hearing Sophia call through the door, unlocks it and steps aside for Demetra to push through. The girl is swept up by her grandmother and great-aunt, who take her into their kitchen for something to eat.

  “Did you sign it?” Thalia asks me.

  “This morning. Nestor left me a note, Theies.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That silence is not always the enemy, and some other things.”