Seven Days of Friday (Women of Greece Book 1) (25 page)

J
uly is a real
bitch
. Every day a new disaster.

Her whole calendar is framed with the misery of missing Max.

Day one, it rains. Not normally a problem, but there’s a hole in the roof. Good thing she bought a bucket. Now instead of the
plinks
and
plops
of water on marble, she’s hearing the same sounds on plastic.

If marriage is about sleeping in the wet spot, being single is about walking through it.

“Do you have a phonebook?” Eleni asks.

“What for?”

“What, you think that roof will fix itself?”

No. Just . . . No. Last thing she wants is some contractor showing up a week after he promised to be here.

“Forget it,” Vivi says. “I'll do it myself. Now.”

Eleni looks horrified. “Are you crazy? It is raining. Of course you are – what am I thinking?”

“Which is why I'm going up there now. Too much longer and I'll have to replace that chunk of the ceiling too.”

Ladder, toolbox, raincoat.

“Be careful,” Eleni calls out. “If you fall, do you want them to keep you on life support?”

Vivi scales the ladder. Throws the toolbox up ahead of her. The hole is tiny, but a hole is a hole. Looks like animals have been throwing a party up here. She patches it as best she can. When the rain stops she can do it right.

The rain stops. The gray skies shrivel away. Patches of blue spread like a welcome virus.

Figures.

In the distance, a megaphone is crackling. The Romani hawking their melons. It’s not long before the rickety pickup stops outside her gate.

She climbs down to buy a watermelon. They all look good, but what does she know?

The guy looks as clean as his melons. He shoves the knife into Vivi’s first choice and pulls out a wedge. Bright red. Perfect.

“I’ll take it.”

She counts the coins into his dirty hand. It takes a while. Learning new currency is one of those pains in the asses no one warns you about.

Melon tucked under one arm, she hoofs it back up the pathway, mouth watering in anticipation.

Her ankle twists and she falls. Goodbye, watermelon.

That thing can fly – fly until gravity snatches it out of the air.

Watermelon everywhere. A red-green halo.

Bad day for Vivi, happy day for Biff. He goes at the mess like it’s Thanksgiving and he’s been fasting since Halloween.

The pickup truck is shaking with all the laughter.

“You want another melon?” the Romani guy calls out.

Vivi says, “Not today.”

Biff goes on licking.

She limps inside with what’s left of her dignity.

C
aterpillars
. A plague of them.

They eat their way through all the plants on the patio, except the cacti from Max. It takes a noxious mixture of soap and water to kill the bastards before they migrate to the trees.

Her aunt is a walking encyclopedia of natural cures.

“You must spray them each week to prevent further infection,” she says, rinsing each leaf with the soapy mixture. “Yanni, George, get out of that tree!”

Effie's boys have freshly shaved heads – to prevent head lice,
Thea
Dora said. Now they’re having a spitting contest up in the plum trees. It’s hard to say who’s winning.

They ignore their grandmother – of course.

Vivi and her aunt wander to the front yard,
Thea
Dora’s mouth doing its best to conquer any stray silence.

“Alternate this with a spray of garlic water. You put a whole head of garlic in the pot with water and boil. Hot peppers are also good, but careful, do not put them on your fruit. It will spoil the taste – ”

She breaks off suddenly. In the same moment, something cracks, someone screams.

They run.

Vivi gets there first.

Yanni is on his back, broken tree limb wedged under the curve of his spine. George is standing over him, poking his brother with a stick.

The boy looks up. “
Yiayia
,” he says to his grandmother, “I think he's dead. Wake him up. I was about to win the game.”

But Yanni is moaning – a definite sign of not being dead.

Eleni rushes out of the kitchen, sees the boy there. “Jesus. I will call 911.”

“Mom, you can’t do that,” Vivi says.

“But the boy – ”

“We’re not in America, remember? Dial 100. And hurry.”

“Wait! We do not need the ambulance,”
Thea
Dora calls out. “Eleni, get the rubbing alcohol. Quick!”

“He doesn't have a fever,” Vivi starts.

A moment later her mother reappears, a clear bottle of blue rubbing alcohol in one hand, vinegar in the other.

“I brought this, too. Just in case.”

Vivi gawks at her. “Did you call 100?”

Eleni shrugs. “Dora knows what she is doing.”

“But he could have a spinal injury!”

It’s horrifying, the way her aunt rolls the boy over and yanks up his shirt. The bottle squirts his back. She rubs in widening circles.

The boy shudders, moans, sits up.

Vivi goes weak with relief. “You could have killed him! If his spine was broken, rolling him over would have snapped it in two. We'd be carrying him out of here in a box.”

“Nonsense!” her aunt proclaims. “The rubbing alcohol cured him. Without it he might be sick, yes, but now he is fine. Look!”

Yanni is already halfway up the tree again, swinging like an ape.

Vivi can’t believe it. Rubbing alcohol for a fall . . . She bet Superman’s specialists never tried that after his incident with the horse.

Footsteps crunch up the path and . . . here’s trouble.

“Mama, what is going on?” The words rocket out of Effie’s mouth.

“It is nothing. Yanni fell out of the tree. Look,” Dora points up at the tree where the boys are reloading their ammunition, “he is fine.”

Effie saves her dirty looks for Vivi.

“He could have been killed,” Vivi exclaims, still horrified at what passes for medical attention in her family.

“Probably you should take him to see that nice doctor,” her mother says. Vivi’s eyes narrow, daring her to keep talking.

“What doctor?” Effie demands. She clomps over to the tree, shrieks, “You boys get down here now!”

Balanced on a branch, George drops his shorts. His Batman underwear is the next to go. Listen to them: pair of cackling hyenas, those kids. George dumps the offending garments on his mother's head.

Effie's screws loosen another half turn. In a flash, she’s halfway up the tree, yanking George’s leg. He’s the church bell in this scenario, and she’s Quasimodo (who else?)

It’s obvious she’s done this, or something like it, before.

The boy falls. She catches him. Then she picks her way across the yard, holding him out from her body by his arm, a game piece from a Barrel of Monkeys.

His brother (the almost paralyzed-for-life boy) stays in the tree, eyes as round as the fruit in his hand. He knows things are about to get bad for George.

And they do.

Effie slaps that boy on every inch of bare skin her hand can find.

“You will not show your backside to me like that again, you little bastard! I'm going to spank you so hard you can't climb a tree again for a year. If I so much as see you near a tree I will beat you,” she squeals. “When your father hears about this you are going to be sorry.”

Snot bubbles down George’s face. Poor kid. “Don't tell
Baba
!”

“I think I am going to call him now and he can take you home!”

“No, Mama! No!”

The two older women do nothing. But Vivi can’t sit here and watch the boy take a beating. A slap is one thing, but Effie is a hitting machine. She leaps up, stops Effie’s arm mid-strike.

“Enough already. All he did was drop his pants.”

Her face goes as red as her son’s ass. The symmetry isn’t lost on Vivi.

Effie drops the boy. He bolts. “This is none of your business. Why are you interfering?”

Vivi points at the tree. “My tree, my house.”

“He's my child. It is not your place.”

“You want to beat your children at home – fine. But you won’t do it in my house. You’ll regret it later, you know.”

Effie and her halitosis get up in Vivi’s face. “Are you threatening me?”

“No. Jesus. I mean you’ll feel bad about it later. You’ll hate yourself for hitting him that way.”

“Mama says you're a bitch who can't keep a man,” Yanni says from his perch in the tree.

Thea
Dora’s head jerks up. “Effie! What kind of talk is this?” She gathers her skirt, waddles over.

“I never said that!” Effie says.

“Yes, you did,” Yanni says. “You said she was a bad mother and Melissa tried to kill herself to get away from her.”

“I guess things could be worse,” Vivi says calmly, though her anger is quietly going Chernobyl. “I could be an ignorant peasant who beats her children over nothing.”

“Vivi,” her mother says. “Don't be rude.”

“She started it.”

“What, are you a child?”

“You're the one who's treating me like one,” she tells Eleni.

“You think you're so perfect.” Effie says, stabbing the air with a finger. “If you knew what I know, you wouldn't be so high and mighty.”

Thea
Dora is all over that. Her hand snatches up a handful of Effie’s hair, twists it at the roots. “Keep your mouth still. Tend to your children.”

Red-faced and getting redder, Effie reloads her hate rays, shoots them at Vivi. She’s daring Vivi to open her mouth just one more time.

“Now!” Effie’s mother barks.

Effie snatches up George’s clothes, glare bolted to her face. “I wish you had never come here.”

“We don't always get what we wish for,” Vivi says. “Watching you beat your children isn't a dream come true for me either.”

Eleni slaps the back of Vivi’s head. Skirmish over.

Can’t outgrow some things.

T
he veterinarian is the
doctor
; the doctor is the veterinarian.

Very chicken and egg.

Biff doesn’t care – he’s got balls to lick.

The clinic’s waiting room is full of people (and pets) putting a lot of effort into ignoring the dog – Vivi included. She’s here because Biff’s full of worms.

The clinic is a sort of optical illusion: outside it’s a snub rectangle, but inside it goes forever. One single hallway with at least twenty doors, no air conditioning, two ceiling fans, and a dozen plastic chairs in reception. White-on-black plaques on all the doors.

After a half hour wait, Doctor Papadopoulos’s door swings open. A whiskey and cigarette voice hollers, “Next.”

Vivi is next, so off she goes.

Doctor Papadopoulos isn’t much more than a kid, but he’s adding decades with that mustache. Big handlebar of a thing, no sign of his mouth. Pale for a local boy. Probably no time to make friends with the sun when you’re both doctor and veterinarian.

“Why are you here?”

Friendly guy. Really putting himself out there.

Meanwhile, Biff carries on licking. Her dog’s upwardly mobile, going from balls to butt.

“Worms,” Vivi says.

“Eh?”

“Worms. My dog’s got worms.”

“Worms?

“Worms! Little white squiggly things.”

“Oh . . .WORMS! You’ve got worms!” Top of his voice. Loud, excited, thinks he’s Archimedes in the bathtub.

Today’s news, fresh off the grapevine: Vivi Tyler has worms.

No such thing as doctor/vet/patient confidentiality around here.

She points at Biff. “No. The dog has worms.”

Yeah, he doesn’t believe her. Not with that look on his face. His hand shoots out, zips his pen across a prescription pad.

“Two medicines. One for you, one for the dog.”

What else can she do – she takes it. “Thanks, but I don’t have worms.”

He looks past her. “Next!”

T
he envelope arrives on a motorcycle
. Thick, yellow, business-sized. American stamps in the top right corner. John’s handwriting. Addressed to her, not her and Melissa.

Which means . . .

Divorce papers. She’s officially single, according to some judge named Wayne Porter III.

There’s no note. Nothing from John to say he’s sorry about how things didn’t work out. Just the papers and a check for child support.

Piece of shit.

She’s angry all over again. It’s tidal, lately. Ebb, flow. Ebb, flow. Right now she wants to punch John in the throat.

It’s –

“ –
T
he curse
,” her aunt says.

Eleni says, “There is no curse.”

“There might be a curse,” Vivi says, being all open-minded about the possibility. This much bad luck, why couldn’t the curse be to blame?

“There is no curse,” her mother repeats.

“Trust me, it is the curse,”
Thea
Dora says.

“She did curse us,” Vivi reminds her glaring mother. “Who is she again and why did she curse us?”

Her aunt gets busy fiddling with the tablecloth. “Why not tell her, Eleni?”

“No!”

“Fine,” Vivi says. “I’ll ask strangers. Everybody here knows everything, and they love to talk.”

“You will not ask anything, do you hear me?” Eleni barks.

“Yes . . .”
Thea
Dora is rubbing her chin, playing the bearded villain in an old silent movie. “. . . that crazy
putana
put a curse on this place, I am certain.”

T
he good news
is there’s an ancient ritual for that.

It’s super-secret, passed down from one generation to the next. Some say it goes from mother to daughter. Others believe it hops man to woman, woman to man. And it may or may not be taught only on Good Friday. In some retellings, it skips a generation.

Like any good ritual, it’s a lot like a recipe:

1 bowl of water.

1 bottle of olive oil.

1 (or more) potentially cursed person(s).

1 woo-woo person.

M
ethod
:

“
F
or a woman to
pass it to her daughter, she cannot speak it directly,”
Thea
Dora emphasizes. “She must write the necessary words on paper, and place it in a bible for her daughter to read on Good Friday.”

“Do you know it?” Vivi asks her mother.

“No. Our mother passed it to Dora, not me.”

“Why?”

“You ask too many questions, Vivi. Why did I raise such a curious child?”

Her aunt recites a prayer, keeps it down low where Vivi can’t pick words out of the lineup. Sign of the cross over the bowl with her hand. A few drops of oil in the bowl. They immediately separate.

Vivi’s not tired, but she yawns.

“There!”
Thea
Dora says. “You have the evil eye from that woman.”

“Yawning means I have the evil eye?”

“Don’t mock the evil eye, Vivi,” her mother says.

“I’m not. I just didn’t realize all those times I thought was sleepy I was really just evil eyed.”

Eleni gives her the do-not-mess-with-me look.

Thea
Dora points to the bowl. “Swish your finger in the water and rub it on your lips. Three times.”

And now Vivi really wants a salad.

“Good,” Eleni says after her sister traces an oily cross on Vivi’s forehead, then repeats the ritual on Eleni herself. “Now that Vivi is no longer cursed, we can trust her to take us somewhere. I need to get outside before I go crazy.”

Vivi raises an eyebrow. “Before?”