Seven Days of Friday (Women of Greece Book 1) (6 page)

S
ame old number
, but
the phone doesn’t nag.

Vivi says, “Dad?”

“How did you know it was me and not your mother?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Eh, probably not. I accepted a long time ago that the women in my life are all strange.”

Vivi can hear the smile. “Are you okay? Is Mom okay?”

“Of course we are okay. But I need to ask you to do a thing for me. It is a secret, and I know you can keep a secret, especially from your mother.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. It’s nothing. Someone is sending me a package, and I do not want your mother to know. If they send it to your house, will you keep it there for me?”

“Sure,” Vivi says. “Of course.”

“Thank you. You are a good girl. I know you have problems right now, but I can’t ask your brother. One twist and he would tell your mother everything. Chris could not keep a secret even from a stranger.”

Vivi laughs because, hey, it’s true. “It’s no problem, Dad. I’ll let you know when it gets here.”

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you.”

He ends the call on a distracted note.

T
he package shows
up a couple of days later. Vivi scribbles her signature on the pink form, and then it’s just her and the box.

It’s . . .

A box.

Unremarkable.

The boxiest box ever.

Only thing interesting is the return address. It flew express, rocketing across the top half of the globe from Greece. The customs form is next to useless. There’s a big, fat smudge across its details.

Huh, she thinks.

Then it’s off to Google for more intel. But Google’s got nothing to say, except what looks like an address is the Greek equivalent of a P.O. Box.

So, basically Vivi’s at a dead end.

But not quite.

Two days late, that finger snapping and heel clicking pays off. Not instant teleportation (which is okay, because on one hand there’s Star Trek, but on the other? The Fly), but an idea busts into her head, waving a bright white on blue banner.

Greece.

Yeah, she could handle that. It meets her criteria: unfamiliar, different restaurants, close to family. Throw in the beaches, the history, the culture, and all the Greek food they can eat.

Her language skills are covered in a sprinkling of rust, but they’ll polish up just fine.

Greece?

Why not?

H
er father shows
up for the package during his lunch break. He never looks like Dad in a suit.

“Where’s the lab coat?” she asks.

“Big meeting this afternoon,” he says. “The company is launching a new drug, soon. They asked me to be impressive, so I wear something impressive, that way the FDA lackeys concentrate on my suit and not on my big, confusing words. How are you doing, my love?”

“Amazing. No, better than amazing. What’s better than amazing?”

“Wonderful?”

“Then that’s what I am. Do you want coffee?”

“Not today,” he says. “What if I spill it on my suit?”

She laughs and gives him the box. “What is it? A surprise for Mom?”

“Yes, it is a surprise for your mother.”

“I won’t say a word.”

But he has already checked out, fingers skating over the label. “Eh?”

“I won’t tell her. About the box.”

“Good,” he says. “You are a good girl, Vivi.”

M
elissa says
, “But whhhhhhhy
?”

(So much angst packed into one syllable.)

“Because it’s the best idea ever.”

“No way.” She’s shaking that blonde head so hard, Vivi thinks there’s a good chance it’s going disconnect itself from the rest of her and slam a cranium-shaped hole in the living room wall. Not good. No way is Vivi redecorating before they move to Greeker pastures.

“Too bad,” she says. “You’re outnumbered. You get one vote, I get two.”

“Not fair. I’ll stay with Dad.”

“And his boyfriend?”

“Okay, I’ll stay with Uncle Chris and Aunt Trish.”

“You’re not staying with Chris and Trish.”

“Grams and Grampy? They love me.”

“I love you.”

“Could we have a dog?”

“Maybe.”

“What about my friends?”

“They’re an email away. And you’ll make new ones.”

“I don’t want new ones. I like the old ones.”

“And you’ll learn to like the new ones. Isn’t this exciting?”

“Yeah right,” Melissa says.

A
couple
of months
mosey on by while she’s plotting her way out of the United States. Christmas comes . . . and goes. The New Year kicks the old one out of its seat.

Vivi pinky swears Melissa to silence. Easy, because the girl’s vocabulary has shrunk to a handful of monosyllabic words. Doesn’t seem likely that she’s going to go on a sudden chatting spree, least of all to her grandmother.

Passports, Visas, tickets. And on top of everything, a whole house to pack. John’s selling the house, moving on and away – from her, from their marriage. Everything she and John collected during their tenure will be divided; her half will go into storage until she decides whether staying in Greece is viable option. John gets first shot at buying out her life if she starts calling Greece “home.”

It gives her a kind of fever.

John doesn’t say much when Vivi fills him in. She’s being nice about it, not bitchy. Flexible, too. But not flexible enough to leave Melissa behind.

He’s okay with that – he’s okay. They’ll work something out. They really will. There’s the Internet and Skype and airplanes to slash the miles.

Meanwhile, she’s making a mushroom out of her mother, shoving her in a dark place and feeding her bullshit. One poorly timed word, and Mom will spin out of control. When Eleni gets going, she’s like a flaming star, thrown off its axis, burning everything in its path.

The house sells fast. One day it’s still theirs, the next it’s not. The buyers have a family and they want the perfect family home.

Well, they can have it.

They sit there in the title office, John and Vivi, and sign away the largest purchase of their marriage for two small pieces of paper. Vivi weighs her piece in one hand. Funny how so much money can feel light and insignificant. Checks and credit cards have a way about them, of transforming something into nothing at all.

She’s pretty sure banks count on that. It’s easier to spend dollars you can’t see.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” John touches her hand. He feels rubbery, unnatural.

“I'm not sure of anything.”

“So, why go then? Get a new place and find a job here. That way Melissa won't have to go to a new school in a strange country. Surely that would be better for you.”

“Better for you, you mean.”

“That's not what I mean.” He escorts her to her car. “Reconsider. Please, Vivi.”

She can hardly stand to look at him, but she makes herself do it, look at the stranger.

Who is he?

Who is she?

“Were you thinking about men all those times we were screwing? Was fantasizing about them the only way you could get off with me?”

“God, Vivi. No. How could you think that?” A guilty man looks her in the eye. “How did you find out?”

The knife slides in easy. His back is butter.

“I didn’t know, until Melissa told me. She saw you. Followed you to your boyfriend's house.”

He goes pale – face and shirt merge where they meet. Despite the Botox, the facials, the dermabrasion, he leaps forward a decade.

“When?”

“The night you left. After some kid at her school saw you at the park, she followed you. This kid and his buddies have been giving her hell about it.”

He slumps against the cold car. “God, Vivi, how did we screw up this bad?”

“You shouldn’t have lied to yourself. That never works out.”

“But I loved you.”

“Not in the way you should have loved me. Not in the way I wanted to be loved. It’s better this way, don’t you think?”

She drives away feeling every synonym for sad. When a marriage dies, there’s no corpse to grieve over, no place to put flowers.

L
ife is
tough in
the gulag.

It’s only temporary, Vivi tells herself. She’s balancing a magazine and a roll of flower-printed toilet paper on her knees in the pink bathroom. Living with her mother is enough to literally give her the shits.

One week until they escape.

Her mother insists on a family dinner, though she still has no idea Vivi and Melissa are about to fly her coop. That means Chris will be here with his wife. Trish is one of those good through to her gooey center types, an optimist who sees the sunny side of everything, even taxes. Have to pay for schools somehow, she says. Aside from Melissa and John, she’s the only one who knows about Vivi’s plan. She helped Vivi with the details, never once begging her to stay.

She gets it, Trish does.

Eleni pulls on her pissy pants before Chris and Trish walk in the door. She’s tweaking the sheers as the Suburban butts up to the garage. “Why do they need that thing? So big. It is not like they have a family.”

Aaaand . . . that right there is the crux of it. Vivi’s sister-in-law doesn’t want kids, though she and Chris dote on Melissa. Like all Greek mothers, Eleni expects Vivi and Chris to provide her with at least ten bouncing babies. Clearly, she was temporarily deaf all those times Chris pointedly mentioned they’re happy living in a childfree zone.

Vivi says, “Lots of people drive big cars. So what?”

“So much gasoline. So expensive.” She scurries to the kitchen, where she gets busy pretending she’s overworked and underpaid; she wants homage before hugs. “Tell him I’m in the kitchen.”

“Them.”

“That is what I say.”

It all goes as Eleni planned. Vivi opens the door, hugs them both, then she says, “Mom’s in the kitchen.” Chris goes on ahead, leaving the women to link arms and take their time.

The sound of Eleni smothering her son with kisses wafts down the hall. Then she starts berating him for hair she considers too long. Jesus had long hair, Chris tells her.

“So how’s it going?” Trish asks.

“Do you know how to make a noose?”

“For you or Eleni?”

“Does it matter?”

Trish laughs. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me alone with her.”

Vivi laughs, too. But it annoys her that five years into their marriage, Eleni still acts like Trish is Chris’s imaginary friend.

“Mostly, I’m trying to stop Melissa from going completely mute.”

Into the kitchen, where the wild thing is.

“Speaking of Mel, where is my favorite girl?” Chris grabs a handful of sunflower seeds from the bowl on the table. He nibbles out the center before spitting the shell on a napkin Trish slides in front of him.

“In the garage with Dad,” Vivi says. “Probably got her nose stuck in one of his woodworking books.”

“She sure likes to read,” Trish says.

Eleni snorts. “Reading is very good for you. My Melissa is a smart girl.”

“Trish knows that. She's a teacher, remember?” Chris lifts his wife's hand, drops a kiss on her pinkie.

Vivi wants to cry, but she won’t do it here.

Fuck you, John. Nothing but a thief, who stole her shot at romance and happiness. And she let him. She’s the one who sat back and said, “Yes please,” to the few crumbs he tossed her way.

No way will that happen again. She wants cake, not crumbs.

Footsteps in the hall, then her dad appears. He winks at Vivi, smiles his wide, friendly smile.

“Would you look at this, all of my favorite people in the same room. Except my girl.” He drops a kiss on Trish’s cheek. “Melissa will be up in a minute. She is reading about some
malakas
named Humbert Humbert.”

(
Malakas
: A man who masturbates so frequently, so furiously, that his brain turns to mush.)

Eleni glares at Vivi across the room. “Why do you let her read these things? It is not appropriate.”

“Lolita is a classic,” Trish says. “And if Vivi’s okay with it, I don’t see the problem.”

“It is smut,” Eleni says.

“Oh, have you read it?”

“I don’t need to read it to know it is smut.”

Chris winks at Vivi; Trish can hold her own with Eleni Pappas and he loves it. Vivi wishes she had that gift, but it’s easier when you didn’t pop out of Eleni’s womb while she was walking to work in the snow – barefoot and uphill both ways, of course.

Worrying about Melissa is Vivi’s new hobby. She’s always quiet, always sullen – times ten if she’s been out with John.

Because Melissa H-A-T-E-S Ian. And Ian’s always around.

Vivi talked to John about it, told him it wasn’t cool to flaunt his fling in front of their daughter, but John told her this is how it is, and if Vivi doesn’t like it, they can let the lawyers scrap over the details.

Anyway, the worrying, it’s reaching critical mass. So, when Melissa is happy, Vivi’s happy. And reading makes Melissa happy, which means . . .

There’s zero chance Vivi’s going to mess with that.

“It's on the school reading list,” she says. “It's not like she's leafing through Playboy.”

Mom makes a huffing sound over the boiling potatoes. “It is pornography.”

A loud thwack of newspaper on wood makes her stop. Her husband glares at her over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. “Eleni, always with the nagging. You never stop. Leave the poor girl alone.”

“How can I leave her alone when she is in the garage reading dirty books? She is not here to leave alone.”

“Mom – ” Chris starts.

Mom slams the lid on the potatoes, hurls the spoon across the room. The wooden spoon strikes the hutch, bounces off the fruit bowl, hits Vivi on the head with a skull-echoing thud.

“Now look what you have done,” Elias Pappas says. Trish hurries to Vivi’s side, but she’s fine. No dents, no cuts, no life-threatening outpouring of blood.

It’s all good. Except for the screaming in her head that won’t shut up.

Eleni waves her hands at the ceiling. “I am the one who is hurting and you take her side? My daughter is getting divorced, has no job, has no husband, and now no home. What am I supposed to tell people?”

Vivi looks at the lunatic. “I don’t care what you tell them. I’m too busy trying to make a new life with my daughter.”

“What are you trying to do? You sit here in my kitchen and eat
baklava
while my granddaughter reads filth.”

“Well, this time next week we'll be gone.”

“You found a place?” Chris asks.

Vivi glances at Trish, who shakes her head. She hasn’t said a thing because, as previously mentioned, Chris can’t keep secrets.

“Sort of,” she says. “Melissa and I are going away. To Greece.” She doesn’t look at her mother, but thanks to the power of peripheral vision, she catches the instant weather change.

“Good for you!” Chris says. “Is this like a holiday?”

“More like a maybe-permanent thing. Or maybe not. We’re testing the warmer waters.”

He whistles. “Damn, Vivi. Good for you.” He looks at his wife. “Babe, did you know about this?”

Trish nods. “It wasn't an easy secret to keep, but Vivi needed a sounding board and some advice about education.”

Eleni is a statue. The tantrum is coming, the drama ratcheting. The air pressure shifts, the way it does when a storm is bundling up its energy for the big strike.

Vivi says, “What do you think, Dad?”

He shrugs. “Eh. If you think it is best.”

“No,” Eleni whispers. “I forbid it.”

All eyes on the two of them. Vivi and Eleni in the ring alone, only one will be left standing.

“Too late. The tickets are in my handbag.”

Eleni runs out of the kitchen.

“That went well,” Chris says.

Trish slaps his arm. “Vivi, are you okay?”

Is she okay?

Is a train wreck okay?

Is a meteor headed straight for Earth okay?

Oh yeah, she’s okay. And now her mother is pouting in the bedroom where she'll stay until they all take turns comforting her and Vivi begs for forgiveness.

That’s the Eleni protocol.

Right now, in this moment, Vivi feels every day of a million years old.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she says.

“Are you sure about this?” her father asks. His forehead is wearing more creases than usual, probably from the constant pressure of Mom’s thumb.

“It's already done. All Mel and I have to do is get on the plane.”

There’s a scuffle in the hallway. Eleni runs back into the kitchen, Vivi’s handbag in her fists.

“You want to go to Greece, eh? I do not think so!”

She upends the lot on the kitchen floor. Lipstick bouncing, tampons rolling, receipts fluttering to the floor. She moves fast, pouncing on the floppy plastic ticket holder, yanks them from their protective coating.

“You want to go to Greece? How will you do that without tickets?”

She makes confetti. Sprinkles some, crams the rest into her mouth.

“I can print new ones,” Vivi says. “It’s all electronic, anyway.”

Eleni raises both hands (chewing, chewing), makes them shiver in the air, as though she’s at one of those Holy Roller services.

“The spirits . . . they are saying you should not go! Bad things will happen if you do!”

“She always says that when it's convenient,” Chris says, in a stage whisper.

“Trust my words,” Eleni says. “If you go to Greece you will regret it. There is nothing for you there except unhappiness.”

So, just like here, then?

T
hings have changed
. In the old days Eleni said no to night-lights. “Why we want to pay for light we don’t see, eh?” Now there’s a tiny LED nightlight in every room that isn’t a bedroom. The hallway reminds her of an airport’s landing strip, with its white-blue glow.

It’s Eleni’s way of acknowledging the passing of the years. Vivi’s parents are not as young as they used to be, nor are they as old as they will be soon.

Vivi goes to the kitchen, raids the
galaktobouriko
Eleni didn’t bake.

“Cut me a piece, too, eh?” Elias says, from the doorway.

“Can’t sleep, Dad?”

“The older your mother gets, the more she talks in her sleep. Tonight she is having a conversation with a shoe.”

“What kind of shoe?”

“An old shoe.”

Two plates, two forks, two desserts. Two silent eaters.

When his plate is clean, her father says, “Your mother is upset with you, but she will get over it. Like she did with the Friday underwear – remember?”

Like Vivi could forget. Eleni swore she would kill Vivi, but that didn’t work out. Vivi wound up with a mouthful of pepper, and seven years of dishwashing. One year for each pair.

Elias leans back in his chair, pats his belly. “When you go to Greece, maybe people will tell you some stories, eh? About me, about your mother.”

“What kind of stories?”

“It has been so long . . . Who knows what the stories will be now. Time changes the shape of a story. Enough time passes and only the original idea is the same as it was. Everything else becomes different. The truth is no longer true, the names change. You will see. Fifty years from now, you will look at this time and you will not recognize the character of Vivi as yourself.”

Okay . . .

“Don’t believe everything you hear, eh? When somebody gossips, they are not doing you a favor by giving you information. They are trying to elevate their position, to seem more important than they are. And they are trying to extract information from you, also. Remember that.”

“Does this have anything to do with that box, Dad?”

“What box?” he says. “There was no box.”

Y
eah
, right. No box.

But that’s okay. It’s not her business.

Elias and Eleni Pappas are not John and Vivi Tyler. Their marriage is a rock.