The Clover House

by Henriette Lazaridis Power

  Once the pattern pieces were cut out, Irini helped Clio’s mother clean them in the galvanized washing tub with water boiled on the stove. When the washing was done, the children carried the wings out to the clotheslines behind the kitchen and pinned them up to dry. In the afternoon sun, the pieces of silk glowed white and gray and blue where their shadows overlapped. As Clio walked among the growing number of wings hung up on the lines, her shadow passed across the silk as if on a set of screens.

  “Sophia, stand over there,” she said, directing her sister to the other side of a piece of cloth.

  Clio struck a series of poses—arms extended, toes pointed in an arabesque, back arched. She flipped up the collar of her jacket and thrust her hands into her pockets. She stuck her chin up and out.

  “Who’s that?” asked Sophia.

  Clio snapped out of the pose. “It’s Hepburn,” she said, hands on hips now, her shadow arms making sharp points at her sides. “Can’t you tell?”

  Thalia laughed, catching Sophia’s eye.

  “I thought you were a man.”

  “No,” Clio said. “If I were a man, I’d look like this.” And she turned sideways, slouched, and pulled her jacket out to make a fatter stomach. It was the shape they all knew from watching Vlachos, unmistakably his squat and almost sullen posture.

  The next morning, they gathered the wings from the clotheslines and spread them out across the floor of the porch. Their mother had assembled her paints and her brushes and had pulled on the wide smock she always kept in her easel. She asked the girls to hold the silk taut and began to paint the fabric with bold strokes of magenta and orange and a fine tracery of black lines to connect the patterns. Clio stared down at the oil paint, waiting for the moment when the lines and colors would resolve themselves into the whorls and circles of a butterfly’s coloring.

  “Clio, let it lie smooth,” her mother said, and she saw that she had been rubbing the silk between her finger and thumb the way a baby worries a blanket. She put her hands in her lap and sat back from the cloth.

  By early afternoon, the porch was scattered with painted silk, and the children stood around as if dazed, sighing in admiration of their mother’s work. Urania, too, sighed happily at what she had made and brushed her auburn hair out of her face with a paint-dotted hand. The wings were beautiful, Clio knew, and she forced herself to concentrate on that beauty. But when she lifted a wing from the porch, she felt the tiny stitches of the seams like scars running across the fabric. Staring down at the painted silk as she walked toward the clothesline, she lost the pattern. All she could see were patches of color striated with the lines of the brush and dotted here and there with bits of grit that had blown onto the porch. Only when she reached the clothesline and pinned her wing back up in the sun did she manage to replace the image of the stranded Italian with the fact of the light shining through the painted fabric. She stood back and saw the silk transformed finally into a butterfly wing, brilliant in its coloring and complex in its design.

  For the rest of the day, Clio found reasons to wander over to the little yard behind the kitchen and watch the wings swing in the breeze, their brilliant colors catching the sun. She half-expected the summer’s butterflies to come early, swarming over the silken wings, drawn to the farm by the fragrance of the oil paint and by these grand images of themselves. Nestor wandered around the corner of the house and suddenly stopped, mesmerized by the light sway of the painted fabric.

  “Oh,” he sighed.

  Even the adults were tempted by the wings and stood in the kitchen doorway or by the side of the house simply to enjoy these splendid decorations. When Vlachos saw them, he smiled, but Clio remembered the cut cords she had noticed around the edges of the cloth and shivered at the image of Vlachos cutting down some handsome, dark-haired young man.

  17

  Callie

  Saturday

  I wake up very early, with only a dim gray light coming through the edge of the curtain. I lie in bed, relishing the duvet’s cloud of encompassing warmth, eager to swap my heavy wool and flannel for one of these as soon as I get home. I miss home. I miss Jonah. Fingering his grandmother’s ring, I roll onto my right side, the side that faces Jonah in our loft bed, and try to imagine myself without him. Not just without him in the bed, or sitting on the couch, or by my elbow at The Sevens—but without him in my life. I have done this before: sent a man away, or made it inevitable that he would send me packing. And, every time, the separation has felt not only inevitable but intrinsic to who I am. I am a person apart.

  Of course I recognize the fallacy in this. A truly solitary person wouldn’t mourn a lover’s loss. A truly solitary person would find him, love him, and then kick him out. I suppose in her strange way, my mother was trying to warn me not to be this kind of person. As I lie here, I realize I don’t want to run through this same sad process with Jonah. And what is it about Jonah that has made it so? I have no idea.

  Through the wall, I notice a faint thudding, and I realize this is what must have woken me up. A woman’s voice lets out a stifled cry. I smile and roll the other way, and I pull the duvet up around my ears to give Aliki and Nikos their privacy.

  With Jonah, I always thought it started with sex. But it really began with that evening of quiet sadness by the bar and went quickly from there to a different need: my need for some other person from whom I could hide, someone who got so close that the act of holding back would be a source of solace. Jonah is, or was, that person.

  I wait for the noises to stop in the next room and then I get up and get dressed. I tuck a red button-down shirt into my jeans and fasten a wide black leather belt that goes with my boots. I brush my hair silk-straight.

  I find Aliki in the kitchen in her nightgown. Nikos is in his pajamas, watching soccer on the television. The apartment has the feel of Christmas, with the adults relaxing so visibly and Demetra in a state of high excitement. She comes sliding into the kitchen on stocking feet outstretched as if on a skateboard and crashes into the table.

  “It’s the parade, it’s the parade, it’s the parade!” she crows, and Aliki presses her hand gently across the girl’s mouth, steering her back out of the kitchen. As soon as Aliki releases her, Demetra resumes crowing until Nikos shushes her and turns up the soccer volume. Aliki wipes her hand on her apron.

  “She licked my hand!” she says, in amused disgust. “You’re getting out just in time,” she says, seeing me dressed and ready. This is the day of the biggest parade, when every club and team marches with its own float.

  “I’m going over to the aunts’,” I say.

  “More questions?”

  “Aren’t you dying to know?”

  She shrugs. “Dying, no. But tell me what they say.”

  Nikos shouts at the television and smacks his leg in exasperation. It occurs to me that I have been treating him as tangential in all of this, even though he seems to understand how our family works better than the rest of us.

  “Hey, Nikos,” I say. “Take a look at something for me.”

  I bring the box over to him and wait for him to turn his attention from the game. He looks into the box and reaches for the bullet, picks it up, and rolls it in his fingers.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “That’s the thing. Nestor had it. It’s a bullet, right?”

  “A cartridge. Spent.”

  “My mother says it could have belonged to Yannis. For hunting on the farm.”

  He examines it closely.

  “She’s wrong,” he says. “It’s from a Breda.”

  “What’s a Breda?”

  “An Italian heavy machine gun. Nestor,” he adds softly, “you surprise me.”

  “Why?”

  Nikos is looking admiringly at the cartridge. “The Italians used Bredas with tanks, or they set them in fortified positions. They weren’t the kind of guns soldiers just carried around with them.”

  “Nikos, why does Nestor surprise you?”

  “Well, the o
nly way Nestor got this was from the Italians themselves. The Breda didn’t leave brass around.” I give him a confused look. “Which means the spent cartridges went back into the clip after you fired them. Someone had to have pulled this from the strip for Nestor to get it.”

  I look at Nikos, who sets the cartridge back in the box. His information seems important, and I can’t understand why he isn’t acknowledging that.

  “You’re a history nerd,” I say finally. “You know that, right?”

  “Don’t tell,” he says, putting a finger to his lips.

  As I gather up my things, Aliki tells me about the plan for tomorrow: lunch at a taverna in Psilalónia, the hilly district of the city, followed by family attendance at Agios Andreas for Forgiveness Sunday after the very last parade, which takes place in the afternoon. I keep myself from commenting on this new observance. Then again, I have never been here for Carnival before; perhaps this has been a part of my family’s life all along.

  “But first there’s Nestor’s memorial service later today.”

  “We’re doing one?”

  “It’s part of Pre-Lent, for all the dead. We did one when Babá died and it meant a lot. It kind of converted me.” She shrugs, smiling. “You and the aunts can come meet us here together,” she says. “And I called your mother. She’s meeting us there.”

  I’m glad Aliki was the one to call her. So full of questions for her these past few days, I find myself now hesitant to speak to my mother until I know the entire story. And I do know that I will have to get it from someone else.

  Thalia leads me to the kitchen with a worried look on her face. Sophia is there, washing dishes. When she sees me, she unties her apron and folds it in front of her. I show her the piece of Nestor’s foolscap on which I have written my list.

  “This is what I know, Theia Sophia. You have to tell me the rest.”

  “Letter,” she reads. “What’s this letter you list here?”

  “From my mother. To a man.”

  Thalia jerks her head to the side, making no attempt to hide the fact that I have flustered her.

  “Theia Sophia, there are three men here: the Italian, the soldier with the feathers, and Skourtis. I know they were connected, but I can’t tell how. Please tell me.”

  “Paki,” Thalia says, “why do you care? This all happened ages ago.”

  I don’t quite know how to articulate my reason. I know that this story has taken hold of me in a way that none of my mother’s and the aunts’ stories ever has. The other stories were all complete, little gems of adventure or grace. This one is rough and messy; it has more of real life about it, and that is what I want to understand: my mother’s real life.

  “Nestor wanted me to know,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”

  “I’ve said all along that she needed to know,” Sophia says to Thalia, who is looking sad again. Sophia stands almost a head taller than her sister and surely knows how imposing she appears now.

  “But, Sophia, we were never certain.”

  “Well, then, I’ll just tell her the facts.” She buttons her cardigan and smooths it down over her skirt. She turns to me and speaks as if she were reading from a piece of foolscap of her own. “The letter was for an Italian soldier, a Bersagliere named Giorgio. The feathers in your box belong to him. He gave them to Nestor.”

  “Why?”

  “For carrying messages between him and your mother.”

  I take this in but don’t want to lose momentum with the aunts. Thalia is sitting down now, hugging herself as if she’s suddenly cold.

  “And that piece of silk?”

  “It’s from a parachute. From an Italian soldier.”

  “From Giorgio? Did he give Nestor that cartridge?”

  Sophia waves my question away. “This happened at the farm. There’s a lot you should know about the farm.”

  “Sophia, don’t,” Thalia says.

  “I’ll tell her what I want to tell her.”

  “This is not your story to tell,” Thalia insists.

  “Of course it is. It affected my life, didn’t it? It affected all of us.”

  “Sophia, we don’t even know the truth.”

  “The girl should know what we know.”

  “She told me about all that,” I say. I can’t understand why the aunts are bogged down on this minor story. “Skourtis killed the Italian and your father sent him away.”

  “Is that what your mother told you?” Sophia shakes her head. “Poor Skourtis was too much of a coward to do anything like that. She just had to make him a villain. It was Vlachos, an old man from the docks. He killed the soldier and Babá turned him in.”

  “Was Papóu a collaborator?” I hate to even ask the question.

  “It was the occupation, Calliope,” Thalia says. She takes my hand and pats it a few times. “Things were complicated.”

  “But why did Nestor save these things?” I ask. “Why are they all in one box? That letter says Nestor did something. That he ruined their plans.”

  Sophia starts to say something, but Thalia jumps up and takes her sister by the elbow. I am stunned. I have never seen Thalia so anxious. She tugs Sophia’s arm back, trying to lead her out of the kitchen.

  “Stop that, Thalia,” Sophia says, leaning against her sister’s pull. She lets out a laugh, but there’s no humor in it.

  “Theia Thalia,” I say, stepping toward them.

  “Just come here, Sophia.” Thalia ignores me. “Come out here,” she says. “Please.”

  “No! Right here. Here where the girl is, so she can understand what her mother’s done.”

  “What are you saying?” I push my hands through my hair. I feel tears coming.

  “Sophia, don’t you see that this is bad for the child? You stand on principle all the time. Everything has to be so precise.”

  “I believe in accuracy, Thalia. In truth.”

  “And that’s admirable, but there are times when human beings don’t need truth. They need a little solace. The child needs a little comforting.”

  “From what?” I say, but they’re not listening.

  “I’ve said all along that there would be a time when she would need to know,” Sophia says. “And that would be a comfort to her.”

  “To carry a burden? What world is that where guilt is a comfort? Sophia, you’re taking this too far.” Thalia lowers her voice, as if I won’t be able to hear. “You always do this, Sophia. You put abstract principles ahead of people. People you love.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Sophia says.

  “I haven’t said anything about this for years. For decades. But you’d be married to Michalis now if you hadn’t objected to his politics.”

  “That’s enough, Thalia.”

  “No, it’s not. You made yourself unhappy because you couldn’t love a socialist. Why make Calliope unhappy now simply because you want to tell the truth? What’s so wonderful about the truth?”

  This is the first time I’ve heard of a man in connection with Sophia’s past. She was the one sister who never married and who always seemed satisfied with her life. I barely have time to contemplate this before Sophia grabs Thalia’s arm and succeeds in dragging her all the way into the living room. I stay where I am, listening to the sounds of their argument, the crackle and hiss of their voices. I could go closer and hear what they are saying. Isn’t that what I want? To learn whatever it is they’re hiding about my mother’s past and their own? But I can’t. I’m a child again—the child they’ve been talking about—and their voices are sucking me back to my parents’ anger and my mother’s despair.

  I finally force myself to step into the room.

  “Theies, please,” I cry, and there must be something pained in my voice, because they both stop to look at me. Sophia’s bun is awry and Thalia looks as if she’s been crying. She steps toward me and forces a smile, brushing my hair from my face.

  “Paki mou, don’t cry.”

  “You have to tell me what she did. My whole life, you’ve
treated her different. We were here every summer, but the three of you were never really together. Now Sophia is making all kinds of accusations. Are you holding some grudge for something she did when she was just a kid?”

  “No, Calliope, no,” Thalia says. “It’s not that.”

  “Then, what? Why?”

  Neither one of them makes a sound for a long time, and I’m about to leave when Sophia speaks.

  “She didn’t treat you right. We never could abide a mother not taking good care of her child.”

  The world jolts, and it feels as if we just had one of Patras’s frequent earthquakes. Then my balance settles. I’m still standing in my aunts’ living room. They are still two old ladies looking at me with sad eyes. And everything else is utterly changed.

  I start walking, letting the slight downhill of the street carry me toward the water. When I was little, the harbor was bordered by a narrow strip of cement on the other side of the main coast road. On the near side were snack bars and tavernas where you could buy souvlaki on a skinny stick topped with a slice of bread. You could get right down to the water and walk along the old jetty where my mother and the aunts used to swim. Now Patras is a giant port, where cruise ships and ferries loom over a wide apron of pavement edged with bollards the size of a large dog. There are traffic lanes to steer you to Brindisi, or Ancona, or the nearby islands dotting the Ionian. It was like this already when I took my trip to Zakynthos, but my childhood memories are stronger than that more recent one. As I reach the sidewalk opposite the central gate, I feel as though I am in a new city, unsure of where to go.