The Clover House (25 page)

“One of these days, it’ll just snap and go crashing to the basement.”

It’s a rather stark statement for my mother. But what sticks in my mind more is the question of how often she visits here. She doesn’t have a key of her own, but maybe she visits more often than I imagine.

Nikos is the one who meets us at the door.

“Clio,” he says, beaming. “A pleasant surprise. Come in.” He raises his eyebrows at me once she’s passed him.

“I didn’t think she’d say yes,” I whisper.

He turns quickly and takes my mother’s coat, hanging it carefully in the closet. He escorts her to the living room and calls for Aliki. I notice that my mother has still not said more than two words to him.

“Aliki, can you bring your aunt Clio a glass of water, please?”

“My aunt Clio?” Aliki steps out from the bathroom, her hand holding a brush that’s embedded deep in Demetra’s hair.

“Ow!”

“Shh! Aunt Clio is here. Finish this yourself.”

“But,
Mamá—
”

“I’ll do it,” I say, and Aliki mouths
Clio?
at me as she heads for the living room.

“
Theia
Clio,” I hear her say, her voice muffled as she’s kissing my mother on the cheeks. And then I grab hold of the brush that’s sticking straight out of the side of Demetra’s head.

“What are you, a horse?” I say, as I hold her head still and pull the brush through.

“That’s what my father calls me.”

“Does he brush your hair?”

“Sometimes.”

Aliki comes back to the bathroom.

“Your turn,” she says.

I wave to my mother and then stoop to pick up the shopping bag I set down at the edge of the foyer when we came in. It’s my plan to get it out of the way, happy that she hasn’t asked about it yet. But my timing is off, and my mother sees the bag, in which the
domino
’s black fabric is now visible.

“Did you buy a
domino
?” I can’t tell if she’s impressed or shocked.

“Who bought a
domino
?” Nikos comes out of nowhere and takes the bag from me.

“Hey!”

“What’d you get?” He pulls out the mask and holds it up to his face, mugging for Demetra, who has come into the room, her hair sleek. “What do you think?” he asks her. “Did
Theia
Calliope make a good choice?”

Demetra takes the mask from him and holds it up to me, testing the red with my coloring.

“It’s nice,” she says, handing it back to me.

“Nikos,” my mother says coolly, “doesn’t the child know to greet her elders?”

“Demetra,” he says, tipping his head toward my mother.

“Hello,
Theia
Clio,” she recites, and goes to kiss my mother lightly on the cheeks. I think my mother gives her air kisses, but I’m not sure.

“Let me see,” my mother says, taking the mask from Demetra.

“What do you think, Clio?” Nikos asks her.

She holds it up in front of her and squints at me like a painter.

“Not bad.”

“I don’t really feel like going, though.”

“You have to go,” Nikos says. “Tell her,” he calls to the kitchen. “Aliki, tell her she should go.”

Aliki calls back, “You should go.”

I take the mask from my mother and go see Aliki. She is pulling a pan of stuffed tomatoes from the oven. The air in the room smells clean and crisp, like summer.

“Aliki,” I say quietly, “I’m not going to go to the Bourbouli.”

“Why not?”

“It’s been a rough afternoon. The last thing I feel like doing right now is dancing.”

Nikos comes in and takes me by the arm.

“Listen, cousin,” he says. “The three Bourbouli dances are the three best nights in Patras.”

Aliki presses her lips together at this.

“Except Easter,” she says.

“Except Easter, when we all try to blow each other up with firecrackers, yes. But besides that fantastic and wholly pagan celebration, the Bourboulis are it. You
will
go,” he says. “I insist.”

“This isn’t a good night for me to be alone in a crowd of revelers.”

If my mother was right about me, though, I should get used to solitude.

“You won’t be alone,” he says. “You’ll be with me and therefore with my friends. You’d be with Aliki too,” he says, “if she’d only decide to leave Demetra with her mother and go.”

“You could leave her with
my
mother,” I say.

“Poor child.”

“Come on, Calliope,” Nikos says. “I’ll make sure you stay out of trouble.” He winks at me.

I look at Aliki, whose face has tightened into a rigid smile.

“All right,” I tell him, but now I am thinking of Aliki and this martyr’s mood that she seems to have embraced. I will go for her; I will be on the alert.

We sit at the table, my mother joining us in the seat that Thalia usually occupies. It’s strange to have this one of the three sisters here without the other two. I find myself hoping that she’ll surprise us all. I imagine a story in which, away from her sisters’ alliance, she reveals herself to be warm and relaxed. Despite everything, I feel badly for her. She doesn’t seem to want to talk to Nikos, and she doesn’t seem to know how to talk to Demetra. After a few salvos, she grazes through the meal in silence. It occurs to me that perhaps she is upset, too, by what I said to her at Nestor’s, and I find myself almost moved at the thought of her potential weakness.

Nikos gets the bathroom first after dinner. I offer to help Aliki in the kitchen, but she is having none of it.

“Are you kidding? You brought her here. You talk to her.”

I sit with my mother in the living room. “You used to go to these, didn’t you?”

“We were too young. And during the war there was no Carnival.”

“What about after?”

“After …” She trails off. “We were too busy getting through the civil war. It wasn’t a time for parties.”

“There were no Carnivals?”

“Yes, eventually there were Carnivals.”

“So did you go? You were still living in Patras, right?”

“What is this, an interrogation? I don’t remember, Callie.”

“I just was curious to know. About your experiences,
Mamá
.”

“Well, go to the Bourbouli tonight and have an experience of your own.”

I look at her, wondering if this is a dig inspired by this afternoon.

Nikos makes an admiring whoop from the foyer, and Aliki whaps him on the arm.

“Experience, cousin!”

Aliki holds him by the shoulders and steers him away. I can hear their voices hissing in the kitchen.

“Bathroom’s yours, cousin,” he says, returning.

“Go,” says my mother. “I’ll wait.”

Nikos disappears into the bedroom to put in collar stays, shirt studs, and cuff links, leaving behind a fug of alcohol and cologne in the bathroom. I rummage through Aliki’s makeup to find some thick mascara and some liner and shadow darker than anything I have brought from Boston. Even though I’ll be wearing a mask, I go for a smoky eye, which seems right for the occasion. I draw the liner out a bit past the outer corner of my eye, Cleopatra style. Aliki brings me a wineglass and a skirt of hers to wear with a pair of black boots I have brought with me. I pull on my white shirt with the long placket and then pull the
domino
over my head.

Taking a drink, I see Nikos in the mirror, his heaviness slimmed by the jet black of his tuxedo. He stands a few feet behind me and looks at my reflection with an appraising eye.

“See, I told you you should go,” he says. “Wouldn’t want to waste this. Aliki,” he calls over his shoulder. “You didn’t tell me our cousin was a woman of mystery.”

“That’s me, all right. Woman of mystery.” I think of what Stelios called me: the mysterious stranger from a foreign land.

I finish the wine before squeezing past him into the hall. The mask makes it easier to face my mother.

“What do you think?” I ask her.

“Appropriate,” she says.

Nikos gathers up his wallet and keys from the small table in the foyer and, without saying anything, hands me the spare key to the apartment. When I frown at him, he murmurs, “Just in case.” I hike up the
domino
to slip the key into the pocket of the skirt just as Aliki and Demetra come into the foyer to see us in our Bourbouli finery.

“What are you doing,
Theia
Calliope?”

“Adjusting, Demetraki
mou
.” I smooth the fabric back down over the skirt.

“I’m leaving now too,” my mother says.

Aliki makes the customary sounds of regret, but no one is fooled, so the three of us go down in the clanky elevator, with Nikos and me in our Bourbouli getups and my mother in her tailored coat and foulard scarf. We kiss on the cheeks, my mother being careful not to smudge my makeup, and go our separate ways.

I wasn’t planning to pull up the hood of the
domino
until I reached the Bourbouli itself. No reason to walk about the streets covered from head to toe, like some woman in a
burka
, while the man struts beside me in his best suit. But when I catch sight of a group of
domino
’ed women across the street, all of them with hoods and masks, I am reminded that this garment is more about revealing than concealing. Carnival: everything turned upside down. The women opposite me move with lithe steps down the slope of the street, their gloved arms making elegant gestures to punctuate their laughter. Nikos must feel like an aged uncle, having to walk with me while he would rather be getting a head start on his seductions.

“So, Nikos,” I say, pulling my hood up against the chilly air. “Why won’t my mother talk to you?”

“Don’t you know? It’s because I come from nothing. I have no name.”

“But your business …”

“I know,” he says breezily. “I started out stripping wires for outlets and now I’ve got four lighting stores, with plans to build a fifth. But it’s
new
money. And I have no education.” He shakes his head in mock despair.

“Oh, brother.”

“Don’t even ask about him!”

I look over, but Nikos just smiles.

“I thought there was a chance that having your mother there would drive Aliki out of the house. Maybe she’d have come with us.”

“What’s going on with you and her?”

“What kind of a question is that?” he laughs. “So American!”

“No, this is a serious question. Why is she so docile all of a sudden? Why is she letting you get away with all this?”

I expect him to be flustered, to deny, to feign ignorance. Instead, he smiles down on me and wags his head sagely from side to side.

“Why not?” he says.

“Oh! So we’re talking about the same thing?”

“If you mean my life as a normal, flesh-and-blood Greek man, then yes.”

I stop and turn to face him. A group of people in street clothes parts around us and then re-forms.

“That is such shit, Nikos. Are you really going to claim that as a defense?”

“I don’t need a defense, dear Calliope, because I’m not doing anything wrong. Maybe in America where you’re all so prudish. But not here.”

“I don’t think Aliki agrees with you on that, Nikos.”

He resumes walking.

“Well, then Aliki needs to be reminded of a few events from her past.”

“Yeah. She told me.”

“Oh, you discussed it?”

“I was worried about her. Just because she played around before doesn’t mean she’s okay with it now. We all do stupid things when we’re young. You’re an adult now, Nikos. Time to grow up.”

“Look who’s talking. You’re the one who’s in a state of perpetual childhood.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How old are you, Calliope? Thirty? Thirty-two? No kids, no husband. Now you’ve come here to take care of this inheritance, but instead you’re cavorting around with these young guys you hardly know. And your excuse is that you can’t get anything done because it’s Carnival.”

I am clenching my jaw, trying to keep my fiercest, most unassailable expression on my face. Nikos leans toward me, placing a hand on my arm. I fight the urge to shake it off.

“I’ve noticed the drinking, cousin.”

“Oh, come on! You all drink wine with every meal. You’re complaining about me?”

“We drink when we’re happy.” He takes his hand away and shrugs. “It’s just something I noticed. So maybe you’re not the only one on the lookout. Don’t get me wrong. The women in this family have it pretty tough. You and Aliki have my sympathy.”

“Oh, we do?” It is all I can trust myself to say, a clichéd irony.

“You do.” He is so earnest and well meaning all of a sudden. I want him to be the slimy Greek man he was just a few moments ago. “It can’t be easy to be their daughters.”

He slips his hand under my arm and leads me down Korinthou Street toward Plateia Georgiou, where the lights from the square are glowing orange. He is laughing now.

“Don’t let Sophia and Thalia fool you: They bicker all the time.”

“Not that I can see.”

“You’re not here that much, are you, cousin?”

The question smarts. I don’t like thinking of my aunts in conflict.

“Nestor was the only smart one, poor man,” Nikos goes on. “He traveled. He got away. A lot like your mother. Both outsiders, both of them wanting to see more of the world.”

I think of my mother covering the windows of the ranch house with brown paper.

“I don’t know why Nestor and Clio argued so much,” he says. “Not like Sophia and Thalia. Real arguments.”

“They hardly spoke to each other,” I say, remembering all of a sudden the sarcastic questions and curt replies that made up their conversation.

“Right. They should have been allies.”

Against what? I wonder.

We reach the edge of the square. The Apollon Theatre is to our right, a grand neoclassical building lining the entire block, with a colonnade at street level echoed by a colonnaded balcony above. Giant floodlights in the square are aimed at the building’s façade. Shadows flit over the pale-yellow stucco as people dart across the front of the enormous bulbs. Most of the people here are in
dominos
and tuxes. The
dominos
move with purpose toward the entrance, while the tuxes wander among them, already maneuvering to be chosen or to choose.