One and Only Sunday

by Alex A King

  The argument rides to the church with them in a white limousine. Bicker, bicker, all the way up to the front doors.

  St George's isn't the church Kiki wanted, but the Holy Mother is too small to hold all the family, the friends, the friends of family, the friends of friends, and the tourists who want to gawk at a Greek wedding. So it's here, or cast the guests out into the late April sun. If she was marrying a man of her choosing, she would have fought for the Holy Mother. It's tiny but it's personal, and not just because the priest is her cousin.

  It's where she goes to beg for freedom.

  Everyone is packed into the bigger church. It's strange, she knows most of these people, but right now they're one long smear. Only a few faces stand out: cousin Max and his American fiancée, Vivi, her daughter Melissa (also one of her students), Kostas and Max's mother—her aunt—and her about-to-be in-laws. Yiayia is there, too in her wheelchair, head slumped on her chest.

  She's in a coma—a different one this time.

  Kiki glances from mother to sister, shrugs. Something's missing. That would be the groom. "So where's Stavros?"

  Stavros should be out here. That's how Greek weddings go. The couple meets at the door, and then they walk in together. A Greek woman doesn't stroll into marriage on her father's arm. Fathers palm their daughters off on the groom as quickly as possible.

  "Not here yet." The voice comes from the church's open doorway. Stavros's koumbaros (best man) and best friend, Akili. He's holding the stefana (flowery halos, tethered together with a single ribbon to symbolize the union), in one hand, punching letters into his phone with the other. The thing about Akili is that he's an ass. And like any ass, he doesn't miss an opportunity to kick her in the teeth. So the lack of kick means he doesn't have clue one where Stavros is.

  "He will be here," Mama says. "Or I will cut off his—" she wiggles her little finger.

  Is Kiki mad?

  Nope. Every second that passes without Stavros showing up is a better one. Obviously he doesn't want to be here any more than she does. He just got smarter, that's all, and skipped church.

  Too bad he didn't let her know so she could skip church, too.

  Time ticks onward. The spring sun is transforming this wretched dress into a torture device. High afternoon now, and all she wants is a frappe. She needs the caffeine punch. This is how lamb feels on the rotisserie, Kiki thinks. Every last hair on her head is scraped into a high, tight ponytail, before exploding into manmade curls. Beads of sweat creep between the captive strands. She wants to shake the whole mess loose, rip off the dress, roll her bare skin over the concrete until she quits itching.

  Almost worth doing it to watch Mama explode. She deserves it for this … this … wedding.

  Inside the church, the natives are restless. No air conditioning, all that incense. There's the eager hum of gossip behind hand-covered mouths. Usually the entertainment starts after the wedding, but she's okay with them getting started early. If the town is going to gossip about her, well, it could be worse, couldn't it? Stavros standing her up outside the church is pretty benign.

  People start flooding up the steps, dressed in celebratory threads. Another wedding is on its way. Hopefully one with a groom. The bride shows up in a limo identical to Kiki's. She's wearing the dress Kiki wanted, a simple slim column. Kiki remembers her from school, back in the days when she was a fledgling bitch.

  "What's the matter, Andreou. Did you get stood up?"

  "I think so. Isn't it wonderful?" Kiki says sweetly. No way can she be mean when she's feeling this great.

  Best day ever.

  Gathering up her skirts, she stomps into the church, as much as anyone can stomp in pencil-thin heels. "Everybody out," she announces. "The groom is a no-show, and there's another wedding about to happen."

  Hooray!

  * * *

  Nice day for a wedding. Not Kiki's wedding, but a wedding.

  Everyone congregates outside the church. Nobody wants to leave—what if something dramatic happens and they miss it?

  "Hold up your hand if you've heard from Stavros since last night," Soula hollers.

  Nobody has heard from Stavros since last night—not his mother, not his father, not his friends.

  "Well," Soula says, bunching up that ugly green dress, "he's not coming." She looks at Kiki. "Beach or dancing?"

  "Beach first. Dancing later."

  Mama's hand snaps out, grabs Kiki by the curls. "She cannot just leave her own wedding!"

  "What wedding?" Soula says, repressing a grin. "There is no wedding. No Stavros means no wedding."

  It's the best news ever. Kiki can't help herself—she laughs.

  And laughs.

  And laughs.

  Beside her, Soula starts to cackle. Two women laughing this hard, it sounds like a chicken coop outside the church. It's infectious. The priest is the next to fold. Kostas Andreou is her cousin, which means he knows this whole wedding thing wasn't Kiki's idea. About a thousand times since he joined the priesthood, she has wandered into the Holy Mother, begging God to shut this particular door and shove her out a window.

  And look, it worked. Here is her window.

  Everything is good. Everything is fine. If the bride is laughing instead of crying, then the guests feel okay about laughing in front of her, as opposed to behind her back.

  "This is not funny!" Mama barks. "How do you think it looks, eh? My daughter stood up by that—"

  Thea Helena moves into range with a granite face. She's in a silvery silk dress that's wilting like warmed lettuce. "By that what, Margarita?"

  It was a rare childhood photo that didn't capture the two women together, but now Mama is standing under the spotlight's hot glare while her best friend tries to snap a new picture that speaks of an alternate ending to their lifelong friendship.

  The answer dies in Mama's mouth.

  Things are bad when Margarita Andreou's mouth dries up. It's one of the signs of a very small, very Greek apocalypse.

  Kiki slides into her mother's orbit, changes the subject to something that won't cause a friendship derailment. "I hope he's okay."

  "Why wouldn't he be okay?" Same question, two mouths.

  Both mothers dive to touch the nearest red thing—in this case, a clutch held by somebody's aunt's third cousin. Kiki doesn't know her name, but from the way she slaps at the women with her bag, it's obvious that somebody's aunt's third cousin has mistaken them for purse-snatchers.

  (It's a Greek thing, the touching red when two people speak the same words simultaneously. If they don't, it's a sign they're going to fight.)

  "I'm sure he's fine," Kiki says.

  And she is sure. This is Agria, a small town on the Pagasetic Gulf, near the foot of Mount Pelion, where death is mostly natural causes, and crime is something that happens to a cousin's uncle's best friend's chicken. It's big news if someone steals an armload of firewood.

  Okay, so years ago there was a flasher, and that same summer one of the local cops died when a pair of clowns robbed one of the village's two pharmacies. But those are outliers.

  Accidents are few and generally limited to tourists accidentally wandering into the merciless Greek traffic, or someone falling out of a tree they shouldn't have been climbing to begin with. And they're easily fixed with liberal applications of rubbing alcohol or vinegar. Need the big guns? Use both.

  So the odds that Stavros Boutos is anything other than okay are extremely low. He's probably holed up somewhere with a bottle of ouzo and a couple of his favorite naked friends, doing her the favor of a lifetime.

  Tonight, she'll crack open the champagne and toast her thanks. To life, to Stavros, to freedom.

  "Kiki …" Soula nods toward the road.

  Snugging up to the curb is one of the town's police cars. She knows the young constable from school, and she knows Detective Lemonis by sight and reputation, mostly. There's no mistaking him for anything but the law; even in plainclothes he looks like he knows how to sniff out trouble and
slap it with cuffs.

  They tramp up the stairs, gazes combing the crowd. A hand shoves Kiki forward. Mama. Somebody has to be the mouthpiece, so—tag—she's it.

  "Is there a problem, Detective?"

  "Helena and Kristos Boutos, are they here?"

  Her hot Greek blood turns cold

  3

  Kiki

  The door to this subtle cage swings open, and the detective walks in; Lemonis, the man who cracked the Boutos-Andreou wedding party like a nut. Three fragments sit on plastic chairs around a metal table that's seen more scratches than a cat's litter box. The other shards, who knows what became of them?

  Like she doesn't know.

  They hurried back to their houses to change, and now they're moving from yard to yard, swapping gossip and speculation.

  Detective Lemonis dumps a pile of platitudes on all three of them, apologizes, as though he's the one who pulled Stavros's plug. They drive with him to the morgue. To identify the body, he says.

  In the back of the police car, Kiki whispers, "Maybe it's not Stavros."

  A small light appears in his mother's eyes. "That must be it. They have the wrong person."

  She takes Thea Helena's hand, pulls it onto her lap, two pallid rocks dumped in a nest of statin and tulle. "That's it, I'm sure of it. It happens all the time."

  Yeah, on TV. Which means she isn't sure at all, is she?

  Down a long pale hall they walk, into the room where death dwells. The morgue attendant jumps into action when the detective nods. It's just business as usual to the attendant; she can tell by the way he moves on well-lubricated joints. He could do this in his sleep, show the dead to their families.

  But it's not Stavros, remember? Mistaken identity. They're here to see a stranger.

  She clutches hope with her manicured nails, all the way up to the unveiling, when Thea Helena's hand falls away from hers.

  Stavros. Dead. Wearing the Scorpions T-shirt he scored when the band played Athens.

  Kiki can't look at him, so she looks to his parents. These two people are stone. And why wouldn’t they be? Their son is the coldest thing they’ve ever seen.

  Lemonis clears his throat. Waiting on confirmation or denial.

  Now she looks at the man who slid the bauble his mother chose onto her finger. A beautiful, meaningless ring.

  Cold pebbles pour into her stomach. "That's him. That's Stavros."

  Thea Helena turns on her, face contorted with fury. "How can you say that?"

  "Margarita," Theo Kristos says.

  The older woman glares at her husband. "It is not Stavros. Just someone who looks like him."

  "It's him," Kiki tells Detective Lemonis.

  Thea Helena shoves her. "Skasmos!

  Kiki wants to shut up, but she can't. "It's him." Quieter this time.

  A slap arrives and it's a good one. Thea Helena serves it up, hot and fresh, on Kiki's face.

  It's a hard wallop, but her up-do doesn't budge. She touches her cheek with one hand. It comes away grey and damp. Tears. Funny, she didn't realize she was crying.

  "I'm sorry, Thea Helena, it's still Stavros."

  She should go. She's not family; doesn't matter that she's been calling them her aunt and uncle since she first learned to speak.

  But it's Helena who stalks away.

  "That is not my son," she yells, finger stabbing the air as though it is her enemy's heart. "That is not my son."

  * * *

  Detective Lemonis dishes what he knows, more or less. Kiki can tell he's keeping secrets.

  Somebody found Stavros this morning, face down on the old rail tracks that run through town but go nowhere, and haven't for years. One bullet through the heart—but one is all it takes if it's an accurate one.

  "Right now I am inclined to call it a suicide. The gun was in his hand."

  He looks at Kiki—looks at Kiki like he's imagining her in stripes instead of this stupid dress.

  "My son would not kill himself," Theo Kristos says.

  Kiki's head bobs up and down like a parrot's. "Stavros is—was—a man who loved his life."

  The stories she's heard, Stavros loved life a lot, and as often as he could.

  "Well," Lemonis says, "we are still investigating. As soon as we know something you will be hearing from me. I am sorry."

  * * *

  Kiki hides in the worst hiding place she knows: home. It's the second layer on a three-layer cake. She and Soula live a literal stone's throw away from their parents. It's the Greek way. Build a house, then build a house on top of that. Keep going until all your children are doomed to live under your roof for their share of eternity. Greek parents like the idea of making the rules forever. And by the time the parents are dead, those children have spent years looking forward to ruling their own children.

  Lucky Soula, she scored the top bunk. Eldest's choice. Kiki is sandwiched between the two.

  Agria is a place where no-one locks doors unless they're tourists, so Mama comes and goes as she pleases—and she usually pleases when her girls aren't home.

  Tonight, Kiki locks the door.

  There is no hiding if people can walk in and find you.

  This warm home she made puts its arms around her, walks her to the bedroom where all her pillows wait.

  Stavros was supposed to be here after today, sharing this house, this bed, these plump pillows Kiki collected over the years.

  Instead, he broke off their engagement in the most permanent way.

  Nice of him to consult her. An "I don't" would have sufficed. It's so Ancient Greek of him, killing himself instead of telling their families "No."

  Bitchy, irrational, cruel, and she knows it.

  Stavros is dead.

  Forever.

  Nobody recovers from that, except zombies and vampires. And that's not really living, is it?

  She takes a brief trip to the kitchen.

  No glass; Kiki doesn't feel civilized enough for a long-stemmed flute. She wants the champagne naked, straight out of the bottle.

  A long, cold swallow of bubbles.

  Stavros had sixteen years to say goodbye.

  Suicide. It's unthinkable. Was the idea of marriage to her that awful? She's no angel, but she's a good woman. Attractive, or so they say. They being the few guys she covertly dated along the way. She wasn't the only one; Stavros had more than his fair share of girls and women, too. But his flings weren't kept in a jar, with a tightly-screwed lid.

  And why not? He is—was—a good-looking man. Not her type, but that wasn't his fault. No more than not being his type was her fault.

  Poor Thea Helena and Theo Kristos. Everything that mattered to them is gone. And poor Stavros. If only she'd known things were that bad. Then they could have worked together and done … something.

  A hand knocks on her front door.

  "Go away."

  Back to bed, just her and the bottle's green curves.

  Here is her closed door, her open window. Here is her freedom.

  Isn't it supposed to taste sweeter than this mouthful of ashes?

  4

  Helena

  Helena Bouto wraps herself in black. Two years is the appropriate mourning period for the loss of a child, but she knows she'll wear black forever. People here will judge her—people she has known all her life. Forever black is the color of widows, they will say, but never to her face.

  Let them talk, they who have the luxury of still-living children, and they who have never been mothers.

  A massive pot boils on the stovetop, its water black. One at a time, she dunks her clothes in sadness. What wasn't already black becomes black, or a close-enough cousin. Then it's onto the clothesline, where the dye stains the earth. Soon this patch of grass will be as dead as her happiness.

  It's not just one child she has lost, but the others to follow. The grandchildren, the great-grandchildren. Now she is a loose end, cut and fraying. Her family's line ends here with her. She had an older brother, but he was lost during
the Regime of the Colonels. Lost! He was not lost. The soldiers executed him for supporting King Constantine and his family.

  Kristos, her husband, has nothing for her. And so they are even. He goes to work, he comes home, and they sit in front of the television without speaking.

  Three dead people in this family, but two are still breathing. Some would call that a miracle, but Margarita knows better. There are no miracles for a woman with a dead child, unless that child climbs out of his grave to join the living.

  The police are worse than useless.

  Suicide. Bah! Her boy did not live a coward's life. Stavros was strong—a man. Her family does not make cowards. It was murder. Helena knows it in her bones.

  What else could it be? Her son would never, never kill himself.

  The Boutos family do not own a car, so she walks to see Detective Lemonis. Everything in town is within walking distance. For everywhere else there's a reliable bus service and taxis.

  Detective Lemonis is accommodating, respectful. Of course he is. No expression on his face, but his eyes are watchful, weighing her words, her actions and reactions, for signs.

  He does not believe it either, that Stavros killed himself. That is what she hopes today, two days after her son's death.

  He walks her to an airless room—not his office, but a place designed for asking questions. Overhead, a fan stirs the heat, but all it is doing is batting the same balls into the corners.

  She spits her accusations across the table, into the detective's face.

  Click goes his pen. Then another click. Click, click, in time with the spinning blades directly above them.

  If she wasn't already half mad, the repetition would make her crazy.

  "Kyria Bouto, believe me when I say that we are considering all the possibilities, at this time."

  Is he blind? Stupid? Always she has heard that the Lemonis boy is a good policeman, smart. But here he is showing her he is the biggest vlakas in town.

  "Possibilities? There are no possibilities." She shivs the air with her pointed finger. "There is only one probability. Stavros would never kill himself. Why would he? His life is happy. He is surrounded by love."