One and Only Sunday

by Alex A King

  Two shocked men. Kostas is the first to recover. "Who is 'they'?"

  "The police. Stavros's mother. And now everyone."

  Max looks confused. "I thought it was a suicide."

  "The detective says it's impossible."

  "Lemonis?" Max asks. "Not the first time he's been wrong."

  "That's what I said."

  He winces. "How did he take that?"

  "Like a cop," she says. "His mouth told me I could leave, but his face said we'll be talking again."

  * * *

  Max leaves first. It's a Vivi thing, not a Kiki thing. The man is in love and he wants to hurry over to see her so he can—

  Kostas holds up one hand. "Yes, yes. We know why you're going over there. Give her our love, eh?"

  Now it's just Kiki and her cousin in black. She looks at the ground-length cassock. "Doesn't that thing get hot?"

  "Only if I wear underwear." He grins. "More frappe?"

  "Sure."

  "Good. You can make one for me, too."

  Very funny, her cousin. But he chases her out of the kitchen. "It was a joke," he says. "Here you are my guest."

  A couple of minutes later he's handing her a refill.

  "What will you do now, little Kiki?"

  "I don't know."

  "You know. People always do. 'I don't know' is what we say when the truth is too difficult to speak, for whatever reason."

  "I really don't know. Since I was twelve, all I wanted was to be free."

  "And now you are. Max was right, it is a tragedy for the Boutos family, but for you it is a gift."

  "Which is why the police thing I killed him."

  "They have to start somewhere, cousin. And you are the logical first step. Give them time and they will find another stone on which to stand. Until then, think about what a newly free woman might like to do."

  "I guess I can do anything," she says.

  Kostas smiles. "You always could. For some of us it takes time to come to terms with our power. Look at Max. He made his stand, and now he's a happy man. Like most happy couples, sometimes he and Vivi fight. But they are fights he chose. Choose your fights, Kiki. Don't let them choose you."

  * * *

  Which fight will she choose, the sacrificial lamb?

  It's a scene out of any old afternoon of Kiki's life: Mama and Yiayia sitting in their wood and wicker chairs, under the shade of the overhead grapevines. Mama has her needlepoint and Yiayia has dark, beady eyes that watch everything.

  A tableau vivant she could call it, if only the players would shut up.

  "I will find you another husband," Mama says, with only Kiki, Yiayia, and a hundred vine leaves to witness her brilliant idea.

  "If I want a husband, I'll find my own."

  Yiayia pats Kiki on the hand. "Do not listen to your mother. She is a fool if she thinks anyone here will marry you now. Some people think you are bad luck, everyone else thinks you are a murderer."

  Great. Best news she's had all day. Where's a rock when she needs one to crawl under?

  "Mama!" Margarita cries, "why are you not dead yet? Why are you still here, torturing me? I try and I try to get rid of you, but here you are."

  "Good," Yiayia tells her daughter. "I enjoy seeing you miserable. You were a horrible child, and now you are a worse woman."

  Before the whole conversation devolves into a bickering match, Kiki jumps in "What do you think, Yiayia?"

  "I think if you killed him, then he deserved it."

  "I didn't kill him," she murmurs.

  "Then I think you are bad luck, so sit over there." She points to the chair at the far end of the patio.

  "Stay right there, Kiki," Mama says. "Do not move a centimeter."

  "Turk!" Yiayia says. "My daughter is a Turkish cuckoo!"

  * * *

  That evening, three men and a woman walk into a taverna. The woman says, "Theo Kristos, Thea Helena needs help. These men can help her."

  And he says, "I know. But I am one man, what can I do? I see her talking with … with our son, and a piece of me is envious that to her Stavros is alive. Maybe that makes me as trelos as my wife."

  Kiki says nothing. It's not her place. She brought these three men together so they could plan a rescue.

  "You know where the line between sanity and insanity sits, Kyrios Boutos." Max orders a round of frappe for everyone. "I know someone who can help your wife."

  22

  Helena

  "No. No, no, no." Helena slams the lentil soup-filled bowl on the table in front of her husband. "Tell him, Stavros. Tell him we will not go to any doctors."

  He will not even look at their son. What kind of man is he who cannot look at his own son when he orders his execution?

  A squirt of brown vinegar into the soup, then Kristos stirs. "Perhaps you and Stavros could go together."

  "Together?"

  "Yes, together." He dips the spoon in the bowl, slurps, proclaims it her best dish yet. "It could bring you closer together."

  She watches the careful way he breaks the bread, dips it into the soup, around the rough edges of the feta chunk drowning there. "How?"

  "A mother always wants to know her children's secrets, yes? If you go together, maybe this doctor can convince him to share some of his secrets."

  It is a trick. A ruse.

  "He is lying, Mama," Stavros whispers from the far side of the table. He's not eating. Why isn't he eating? Is it her cooking? He loves lentils.

  "Shh," she says, but to whom? "Let me think."

  "Think," her husband says. "Sleep on it. You do not have to make a decision today, okay?"

  23

  Kiki

  Wedding gifts jostle for breathing room on her dining room table. They need to go back to the hands that delivered them, with an apologetic note.

  But Kiki's been stalling. How do you pen thank-you-but-no-thank-you notes to people who call you a murderer? Maybe she should leave a little winky face at the end, let them think maybe they'll be next if they keep it up.

  Other than the gifts, the only sign of Stavros is a picture on the bookcase. The two of them side by side, his arm curled around her waist, while hers dangles awkwardly in perpetuity. The day was September fourteenth, Stavros's name day, and their parents insisted. They would be glad, the mothers told them. All children should see what their parents were before they become one.

  There's a knock on the door—a soft one in Morse code, by a hand that's used to keeping secret visits secret.

  A hand she hasn't heard in some time. These days, Soula busts her way in. She enters a room and immediately looks for a way to command it. But tonight, she slips through the door quietly.

  "Are you okay?"

  Kiki nods. "I'm okay."

  Soula smiles. Her sister is a knockout, her features bold. They're similar, two women who clearly belong to the same set. Two equally vibrant paintings, in their own ways.

  "Anything you need, you let me know, okay?"

  "You know I love you," Kiki says.

  "I love you, too."

  Soula turns away. Kiki is this close to shutting the door when a small bell tinkles inside her head. A sister's intuition.

  "Hey. Are you okay?"

  Soula nods, but she doesn't look back. "I'm always okay."

  No, Kiki thinks, you're not. Lately, Soula is not always Soula.

  24

  Helena

  It is a quiet waiting room, tasteful with its vanilla walls and its Dutch art.

  "Boring," Stavros declares.

  The receptionist glances up at them. "Excuse me?"

  Helena shakes her head. "It was nothing."

  Stavros is smiling, but his voice is rough, angry. "I don't want to be here."

  "I do not want to be here either, but we have to be."

  "Why?"

  "Because your father said so."

  "Him! What does he know?"

  "Quiet," she says. "He is your father. Show him respect."

  The door le
ading to the inner sanctum opens. A woman steps through, a lovely woman who looks too fashionable to be helpful. Her red shift and impossibly high heels make Helena feel dowdy in her black dress. What can a woman that beautiful possibly know about life and all its troubles?

  "Helena Bouto?"

  Helena stands, but her feet won't let her move. She doesn't want to pass through the doorway. That woman wants to rip her away from her child. She knows Kristos fed her bullshit. All that nonsense about coming here to be closer to Stavros …

  But she came anyway, did she not?

  Why, Helena? Ask yourself why.

  Then the psychologist smiles. She is warm, caring, and for a moment Helena feels the sun reaching for her. "Your son can come with you, if you like."

  Now it is Helena who beams, and suddenly her feet are okay with moving. Everything will be fine. This doctor understands what it is to be a mother.

  * * *

  Dr Triantafillou is her name. Triantafillou, like the flower of love and romance. Helena tries not to think about Kiki and the waterfall of roses she held in her hands on her wedding day.

  There is a couch, but the psychologist does not steer her toward it. Instead, she lets Helena choose where they will sit. Helena sits her son on the cream-colored couch, then she takes the chair nearest the window for herself. They are tall things, floor to ceiling, an open invitation to the sun. And it accepts. In it comes and paints them gold. Three people, all of them blessed, all of them angels.

  "I am here because my husband asked it of me, not because I am sick."

  Dr Triantafillou smiles. "Most of the people who come here are not sick. But they find it useful to have someone to speak with. Like a friend who listens and never judges."

  "I have enough friends."

  "You're a very lucky woman. Friends—true friends—are wealth."

  Helena shakes her head. "You are wrong. Children are wealth." In her lap her hands are curled up the way kittens sleep. For a moment she does not believe the hands are hers. How can they be? They are an old woman's hands, her mother's hands. "Do you have children?"

  "One," the psychologist says. "A girl."

  "One. A girl." Helena hears her mouth say it in a vague, repetitive way, as though she is the other woman's mirror. "Do you want more?"

  "In time. For now I am enjoying this one."

  "And your husband?"

  "No husband. It is just the two of us."

  "How—" Helena cuts herself off. It is not her business, this woman's situation. They are not friends but strangers. Opponents, of a kind. "We also have one—a son. My Stavros."

  "Would you like to talk about your son?"

  Her hands untangle, fold themselves a new way. "What is there to tell? He is a boy—a man, now."

  Stavros's gaze is heavy on her shoulders. He's behind her, listening to every word. The psychologist's attention flicks to Stavros then back to Helena again. This Dr Triantafillou is not what Helena expected. What she anticipated is what the TV shows: heavy furniture, darkness, a large notepad upon which the head doctor would record Helena's every word, furtively analyzing her every movement. But this doctor sits casually, legs crossed, hands resting in her lap as if they are just two women having a conversation about everyday things, instead of the contents of Helena's mind.

  "He is an accountant," Helena continues.

  "With a big firm or his own company?"

  "His own. But he had very big clients. Very prestigious."

  Had? What is wrong with her? Has. Stavros has very big clients.

  "You must be very proud."

  "I will be even more proud when he marries and gives me grandchildren."

  A red lipstick smile. "My mother always says the same thing. My brothers and sisters and I could have fifty children between us, and still she would want more."

  "It is as I said: children are wealth. And people who have many grandchildren are very rich." Her gaze fixes on those shoes with their long, red stems. The doctor reminds her of a geranium, or maybe a poppy. "I am poor. And now I will always be poor."

  "Would you like to talk about it, Helena?" Soft. Gentle. It is easy to see this woman as a mother.

  "There is nothing to talk about. We are Greek—we do not talk. We yell and we are silent. Nothing lives in the space between."

  "It doesn't have to be that way. People come to me all the time just to talk."

  Talk! Who goes to a stranger just to talk? She cannot believe people anywhere but on the TV do this—and even then it is for Americans. Greeks do not go to therapy. They go to church or to family. And even then they do not spill all the words and thoughts they've collected. Who wants to see all the monsters that live inside another's head?

  "What do they talk about?" Helena asks.

  "Many things. What makes them happy, what makes them sad. Sometimes they talk about something interesting that happened this week."

  "Nothing happened this week. Or last week. Not for many weeks."

  "What was the last interesting thing that happened?"

  "A wedding."

  "Was this your son's wedding?"

  "No." The lie bolts out of her throat. "Yes," she corrects herself. "Yes, it was my son's wedding to that girl." The last word shoots out as if it is an olive pit in an angry mouth.

  "You do not like his intended?"

  "These days, I do not even like myself."

  25

  Leo

  That damn rooster wakes Leo at dawn. Moments later, he's joined by a few of his buddies from around the neighborhood. All of them competing. Worse than that bratty drill sergeant. He'd strangle the bird, but he likes the way it struts about the yard, chest puffed out like he's somebody, no clue that he's a foot or so tall.

  His grandfather's in the kitchen making Greek coffee, toupee on backwards. Leo has never tried the stuff. When they lived here he was just a kid. Back home, his mother makes it the American way. Tall mug. Lots of sugar. Milk. Goes down like candy.

  "You want coffee?"

  Leo peers at the dense, brown sludge in the tiny long-handled saucepan. A briki, they call it.

  "Coffee, yeah. But not whatever that is."

  "This is the one true coffee! That coffee xenoi drink is for people who are not lucky enough to be Greek."

  "Looks like mud." He's trying not to laugh. It's leaking out, anyway.

  Socrates slaps the air, but he's smiling. "Bah! You are Americanos, not Greek. Where did my grandson go? That boy was Greek!"

  He pats his grandfather on the shoulder. "For you, I'll try it."

  "Try!" The old man mutters something about how trying is for Turks and Albanians. People who do, now they are Greek. King Leonidas and his Spartans did not try defeating the Persians.

  "Newsflash, Papou—"

  "Socrates."

  "—the Persians won."

  "Only until they lost. Then that girl Xerxes ran home to his mama." He pours the coffee into two demitasse cups, shoves one cup on its saucer into Leo's hands. Then he shuffles out of the kitchen. "Come, we go outside. It is not healthy to be inside all the time."

  The early summer sun has sting, but the morning air still has a cool edge. Movement everywhere. Women carrying dishes to the bakery across the way. For cheap, the baker slides the dishes into the wood-burning ovens alongside his bread. At noon, the women will return for their bubbling dishes. Many of the houses here have their own wood-burning ovens. Great in winter, not so much in summer. So they outsource.

  "Where's Laki?" Lucky Laki, the statue.

  "Asleep. Always he sleeps late. Will you call your embassy again today?"

  "They won't help. So I'm going to try something else."

  "There you go trying again. Why not go there and camp on their front doorstep until they give you what they want?"

  "Good way to get arrested, Socrates."

  "A man should get arrested at least once. It builds character. In a cage you learn who you are."

  Leo laughs. "When were you arrested?"
<
br />   "During the Diktatoria. Like all the smart people."

  * * *

  Once upon a time, Greece had itself a king, a queen, and a nest filled with tiny royals. The country stood to the left, politically. Until 1967, when a group of colonels decided the country needed to take a big step to the right. They stuffed the constitution into a drawer, then, within minutes, arrested every notable person standing on the far side of the line, including Greece's acting Prime Minister. King Constantine shrugged, figuring the coup was for Greece's own good.

  Good for Greece, maybe. But not good for many Greeks or their king. Anything tilting left was quickly banned. Your favorite musician is left wing? Okay, no music for you—you will not play, you will not listen. Mikis Theodorakis, Greece's most famous composer, was one of the loudest voices against the junta, and for that they tossed him into jail, then into a concentration camp, then, finally, out of Greece entirely.

  The king asked for do-overs of the bloodless kind, and tried shooing the colonels out of his yard, but they snatched the broom out of his hand and swept him out of Greece. Then they magicked a kingdom into a republic.

  It's only recently, forty-something years later, King Constantine has finally moved back home to his mama: Greece.

  * * *

  "How bad was it?"

  Socrates shrugs. "It was the same as being married to your grandmother. But the food and the company were better."

  Leo hides his smile. His grandmother, like many Greek grandmothers, was a mostly-benevolent dictator.

  "Yeah, I don't want to go to jail. I have plenty of character. I know who I am."

  "Oh really?" The old man's wiry brows lurch north. "Who are you, Leonidas?"

  Leo laughs. "I'm the guy who's not going to jail."

  "Where are you going? You are running from something, or you would not be here."