“So prudish. This is Carnival, Calliope. Once is never enough.”
He presses his mouth onto mine and reaches under my T-shirt. I don’t have the angle to kick him in the balls, and I know that if I do I’ll have only a minute before he’s up again. I need to get him to the door, where maybe I can thump his nuts and shove him out while he’s groaning on the ground.
I let him feel my body relax and I kiss him back. He pauses, surprised, and renews his efforts. His mouth tastes sour and his stubble scrapes my face. I shuffle us toward the foyer. Let him think I’m headed for a bed. He tugs on my T-shirt. I see an opportunity. I join in, step away from him, and pull the shirt over my head. He comes toward me again, and as he kisses my breasts, I spin around slowly so that his back is toward the door.
“Now you,” I say, and make as if I’m reaching for his belt. And then I swing my knee into his balls. He crumples, whining through clenched teeth. I open the door and start to shove him into the hallway.
“Callie, what on earth are you doing?”
It’s Aliki, and behind her is Nikos, just coming out of the elevator. I am standing topless in the hallway over a drunken man who is clutching his groin. This does not look good.
“Who is this asshole?” Nikos says, grabbing Stelios and heaving him to his feet. “Is this the guy, cousin?”
I nod.
“So you’re the guy.” He throws Stelios up against the wall.
“Easy, man,” Stelios manages.
“Nikos, quiet,” Aliki says. She comes over to me and folds her garnet wrap around me.
“Oh, no, Aliki. There’s no need to be quiet. This—what’s his name?”
“Stelios,” I say. “Stelios Pappamichaïl.”
“This Stelios Pappamichaïl deserves for everyone to know what kind of scum asshole fucker he is.”
Nikos jams Stelios’s head back and sticks his nose into Stelios’s face, Nikos’s round features right up against Stelios’s sharp ones.
“Listen, you fucker. You come near my family again and I know ten guys who will have a great time beating the crap out of you while the police look the other way. You understand?” He shoves him again. “You understand?”
Stelios nods. Nikos walks away, making a show that Stelios is no longer dangerous, and calls the elevator from its return to the lobby. We wait for what seems like an eternity—an odd-looking group for the neighbor who I’m sure is peeking through the peephole at us. Aliki in her lovely gown, me in her wrap and a thong, Stelios rumpled and sweating, and Nikos hulking but impeccable in his tuxedo. Finally the elevator clanks into place, and I hold the door open while Nikos shoves Stelios in. He leans over and presses the ground-floor button.
“You even try to come back and I will make it so your mother won’t recognize you.”
We watch the elevator descend, then go back into the apartment. Aliki turns on the light and starts to move me toward my room. Nikos picks up my T-shirt from the floor and hands it to me.
“In case you change your mind about the topless thing,” he says, putting on a wistful face.
Aliki asks me if I’m all right and if I want to explain anything. I haven’t taken it all in yet.
“Make it so your mother won’t recognize you? Where did he pull that one from?”
“He watches a lot of movies,” Aliki says. We try to laugh.
“I’m so sorry, Aliki.”
“Why are you sorry?”
I shake my head. “If Demetra had been here—”
She puts her hand on my arm to silence me. But I can see it in her face. She is thinking the same thing.
“I’m really sorry,” I say again. “I brought this to your home. I made this happen.”
“Calliope, if a man does something to deserve a kick in the balls, it’s not your fault. You had him all taken care of, anyway. You didn’t need Nikos’s help.”
I suppose she’s right. I had already managed to get myself safe before Nikos and Aliki showed up. All I had to do was close and lock the door and maybe call the police to finish the job.
“Will you be all right to sleep?”
“I’ll be fine.”
I lie awake for a very long time, well after the sounds of the apartment settle into stillness. Aliki was wrong. It is my fault. I was just lucky I could keep things from getting worse. I listen to the refrigerator humming, to Nikos snoring, and I wait for my heartbeat to slow down.
15
Callie
Friday
In the morning, Aliki, Nikos, and I step gingerly around one another as we get something to eat. I can tell they want to talk about what happened, but they’re waiting to take their cue from me. As I butter my toast I consider various approaches and then settle on light.
“So, you really know ten guys who beat people up?”
Nikos considers this. “Seven. It seemed a good time to exaggerate.”
“I’m impressed. I think.”
We chew.
“Paki, what was he doing here?” Aliki asks this with a release of pent-up energy that tells me this has been her main concern.
“He just showed up.”
“You didn’t invite him?”
“Aliki, no! You thought I’d invited him here? While you were gone?”
“You’d have had the place to yourselves.”
“That’s not what happened. He just showed up. I thought it was you. I thought you’d forgotten your keys. Next thing I knew, he was in the house and I was trying to figure out a way to get him out of here.”
“And you did a great job, cousin,” Nikos says.
“Aliki, when I said I brought this trouble to your home, I didn’t mean it literally. But he came here looking for me. I’m really sorry. I picked the wrong guy and you got dragged into my mistake.”
“No, I’m sorry, Paki. Sorry I misunderstood.”
But I can tell she’s still worrying about it.
“I’m going to get ready,” I say, gulping down my coffee and nearly scorching my mouth. “I want to talk to my mother some more about that box. How about you two?”
“We have stuff around the house before we get Demetra back.”
They’re nesting, making their home safe again for their child.
I have Nestor’s box tucked in my bag and I am standing at the door to my mother’s building with my hand on the buzzer. There’s a chance she’ll be out at the market, but a phone call would only have given her time to prepare. I want to see my mother as she is, without her defenses up. Maybe I can reach her then.
She buzzes me in and greets me at the door with a guarded smile before leading me to the kitchen. She has been eating breakfast and is still in her bathrobe. The sharp odor of slightly burned toast lingers in the air. Dark crumbs litter her plate and cling to the edge of her knife. It suddenly occurs to me that she is not just old but elderly—and that the bad timing that led her to burn her toast this morning could soon turn into general forgetfulness and worse. The war and the civil war delayed her life, so she was over forty when I was born. Now I feel a moment’s panic at the thought of me living in Boston while my mother is so many miles away.
“Want me to make you some?” she says, with her hand on a loaf of bread.
“Sure,” I say, though I’m no longer hungry. “That’d be great.”
She pops the bread out of the toaster golden brown and brings it to the table on a plate for me.
“Drimakopoulos’s bread?” I ask as I take a bite.
She shakes her head. “From the supermarket in Rio.”
“How do you get all the way out there?”
“Taxi,” she says. “I refuse to take a bus.”
We sit together in her small kitchen, eating our toast and sipping coffee. I watch my mother eat.
“I changed my flight,” I say. “To Tuesday.”
“Good. You’ll be here for Clean Monday.” Aliki’s words.
“What is so special about Clean Monday?”
“It’s the day Lent begins. A big
family holiday.”
“What do you do for it?”
“People picnic and fly kites.”
“No, you. What do you do for it?”
“I go where I’m invited. If I’m invited.”
“Mamá, of course you’ll be invited.”
She shrugs, and I guess I know a little bit about how she feels, though it’s not anyone’s fault but my own.
I’m conscious of Nestor’s box sitting in my bag in the foyer.
“Mamá, you were looking for something the other day.”
“When?” She picks up her knife and smears more butter onto her cold toast.
“At Nestor’s.” I go to my bag, catching sight of the large walnut mirror casting reflected light on the opposite wall. I bring back the box, holding it flat on my palm like a tray. “You were looking for this, weren’t you?”
“I’ve never seen that box before in my life.”
My mother is holding her toast midway to her mouth, unmoving, her eyes on the box. I tug the lid off and watch my mother’s expression change instantly, from feigned indifference to what I can only describe as sorrow. She sets her knife down very carefully and wipes her hands on her robe. Without saying anything, she lifts the feathers out and sets them carefully down on the table. She plucks out the topaz ring and holds it by the bottom of the band, staring at it for a long minute. She holds the bullet between thumb and middle finger, frowns, and sets it down. Then she removes the scrap of silk and drapes it across her fingers. She reaches back into the box and picks at the edge where the side meets the bottom.
“There’s nothing else,” I say. I had planned to be forceful, but I can’t bear to push at her when it is so clear that simply the sight of these things has shaken her. For an instant, I wonder if she is putting this on, hoping I won’t pry if she manages to look frail and sad. But she has set the ring down beside the feathers, the bullet, and the silk, and is just sitting there with her shoulders hunched. Even my mother cannot fake so authentic a posture of dejection.
I rest my hand on her arm.
“This is your ring, isn’t it, Mamá? Why did Nestor have it?”
She waits a minute before she answers.
“I gave it to him. When I left for America.”
She goes back to her coffee, but her eyes peer over the rim of her cup at the feathers, four of them, thin and long, with a blue-black sheen. They seem utterly exotic in my mother’s kitchen with its slick surfaces of white and glass.
“And he was supposed to keep it?”
“I forgot about it.”
I’m not sure I believe her. “Even when Aliki wears her matching choker? Doesn’t that remind you of your ring?”
“Can’t we talk about something else?”
“Well, why did he have that bullet, then?”
“How should I know?” She glances at it. “It probably belonged to Yannis. For hunting.”
“What about these feathers? And the silk?”
“They’re just old things, Calliope, from the past.”
“Why? Why would Nestor bother to save them?”
She bangs her cup down, spilling coffee into the saucer.
“Why can’t you leave all this alone? You come here for the first time in years and have the nerve to hound me about my life?”
“I’m asking because there are things I need to know.”
“No, you just want to know them. Don’t confuse your desires with what’s necessary.”
“Nestor wants me to understand. He told me in that note. And you’re trying to hide something, Mamá. Or you’re hoping you can find it before I do.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “You’re like a child. A complete child. That was Iáson you were talking to the other day, wasn’t it?” she says, getting Jonah’s name wrong again.
I remember Stelios’s voice on the phone.
“You’re having trouble with this one too,” she says, nodding at me.
“Don’t start that.” I slide my hands from the table and draw myself up. “These are my things, now, Mamá, whether you like it or not. Tell me what they are, or I’ll ask Thalia and Sophia. I bet they know.”
My mother’s face is trembling, and her jaw is set with that forward thrust that sucks her cheeks in. She takes a large breath and exhales loudly, resting back against her chair as she does so. She picks up her coffee again, not noticing the spilled liquid dripping from the bottom of the cup. She sets the cup down, looking at me with an expression of unconcern that she knows appears completely false. She is playing this game to win.
“I will tell you, Calliope, since you feel compelled to know. That man you admired so much, in the photograph?”
I nod.
“His name was Skourtis, and he was a refugee. He came to the farm in late November, not long after we ourselves had left the city because of the bombing raids. He worked for us on the farm to earn his keep. He milked the cows, he helped harvest whatever had to be collected, he picked fruit. That’s what he has in that basket in the photograph—which Nestor must have taken with the camera they gave him for his birthday. His tenth birthday,” she adds, as if she is clarifying the record for a reporter. “The Germans attacked Greece in the spring, and they let Mussolini tag along after we’d beaten him in Albania. They gave him Patras, but the British tried to win it back. You could see the dogfights and hear the whistling of the planes. We watched them from the hill beyond the farm.”
I want to ask her about the bombs, about a shelter, but I don’t dare move until she has stopped.
“One of the Italian planes fell in the woods near the farm. We could see the smoke, but after a few days we forgot about it. Then Skourtis showed up one day with a parachute. He had it bundled in his arms, with the strings dragging behind him in the dirt. In the movies, they look white, but this one was gray, dirty.”
I look down at the piece of silk on the table. It is a dirty gray.
“Yes, Calliope,” she says with disdain. “That is from the parachute that Skourtis brought us. See?”
She picks it up and waves it close to my face.
“See those brown spots? They’re blood,” she says, tossing the scrap down by the basket of sliced bread. I want to tug it away, to keep the dirt and the blood from the bread she will want me to eat.
“Why is there blood? Do you want to know? Of course you do, because you want to know everything about everything. Skourtis found the soldier hanging from his parachute in a tree. Skourtis cut him down, took the parachute, and killed him. Probably not in that order.”
She bites into her toast.
My eyes widen.
“You’re shocked. You can imagine we were too. This man we had taken in, whom we had accepted into the farm against our better judgment. This man we knew nothing about—his family, his schooling, if he had any. And he repaid us with this act of violence.”
“Or self-defense,” I say. “The Italian was an enemy. Maybe—”
“Maybe the soldier attacked him? The man was in a tree, probably hanging there for days. No,” she snaps. “Skourtis showed himself to be a thug, an uneducated laborer. All he knew was violence.”
“What happened to him?”
“We turned him in, of course.”
“To the police?”
“There was no police then. We gave him to the Italians. As soon as the occupation started, a week or so later, they came looking for who had killed their soldier.”
“And you told them?”
“Skourtis was a thug. Why should we have risked our safety to protect him?”
I am shaking my head.
“I can’t believe Papóu would have turned a Greek over to the enemies.”
“This isn’t a movie, Calliope. This was the war, and it was painful and violent and sad. What you believe or don’t believe is completely unimportant.”
This last comment snaps me back to my own life. I puff out a laugh, reminded that this is my mother I am talking to. The unimportance of what I believe was
established long ago.
I start to pack up the silk, the bullet, and the feathers.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Going.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Back to finish, maybe.”
I see her looking at the ring.
“You should have that.” I leave the ring on the table, press the cover down on the little box, and prepare to leave.
I go straight to the aunts’ apartment. Demetra lets me in and I can’t believe it’s still only Friday morning, the day after Stelios came looking for me.
“Demetraki,” I say, giving her a hug and a kiss. “Were you good for my aunts?”
“She’s always good for your aunts,” Thalia says, coming into the hall.
“Thalia,” I say, so eager to start that I forget to kiss her hello.
She leans toward me and kisses me on each cheek, so I am forced to wait. Thalia draws back, her hands still on my upper arms, and frowns at me.
“What’s the matter?”
“I need to ask you,” I say, sitting down on the edge of the living room couch and placing the box on the coffee table. I lift the lid, and Thalia makes a sighing noise from a sharp intake of breath.
“Look at that,” she says.
“What?” Demetra leans against the coffee table and pulls a feather out.
“Put that down, Demetra!” Thalia says.
I look up at her. I have never seen her look so serious. Neither has Demetra, it seems. The girl is looking at her grandmother with wide and liquid eyes; her hand is held out stiff, the feather a sinister curl across her palm. Thalia gently takes the feather from her and sets it back in the box. She is smiling when she tells Demetra to go to the kitchen and ask Sophia to make me some cinnamon toast.
“But I already ate.”
“It’s all right,” Thalia says. “You can have some more.” This will be my third breakfast.
Once Demetra is gone, Thalia sits beside me on the couch.
“What are these, Theia Thalia?”
Thalia looks over her shoulder toward the kitchen.
“I don’t think I should tell you.”
“But you saw Nestor’s note to me. There’s a story he wants me to find.”
The Clover House Page 25
