The Clover House (27 page)

A blue sweater is draped over the roof of the house.

“Do you not play with that anymore?”

“Not really. I’m too old.”

She pulls the sweater on over her head. Bits of woolen fuzz cling to the tiny shingles on the roof.

“Maybe
Theia
Clio would want it back,” I say, trying to sound offhand.

“She’s the one who gave it to me,” the girl says brightly.

I take this in. I suppose here is the surprise I was looking for yesterday. My mother showing generosity to a little girl she doesn’t seem capable of communicating with.

“There’s another parade today,” Demetra says, following me to the kitchen.

“You going?”

“Want to go with me?”

“Demetra, go put some pants on,” Aliki says. The girl turns around and heads back to her room, grunting in dramatic irritation.

“So,” Demetra says when she returns. “Come to the parade with us. It’s a musicians’ parade.”

“What time?”

“Eleven.”

I look at Aliki.

“I was hoping to talk to the lawyer today. Is there even a point in trying?”

“Go now,” she says, “and maybe you’ll catch him.”

“Then I’ll go with you, Demetraki, to the parade. I promise.”

“Can this be our thing? You know, our thing that we do together, just you and me?”

“Your aunt Calliope will be coming from the lawyer’s, Demetra. So I have to bring you,” Aliki says.

“Well, then, you can leave when she gets there.”

“I’ll stay.” Aliki tries to make it sound offhand. But I know what’s going on in her head. She’s not sure she can trust me to show up. And once I’m there, she’s not sure she can trust me to take care of her daughter. I don’t blame her. This is what a
mother should do—stand guard over her kid to make sure she doesn’t follow bad examples like me.

Aliki and I make plans to meet near here, on the corner of Korinthou and Agiou Nikolaou, at eleven o’clock. By the time I’m ready, I have to rush several blocks down Korinthou Street without getting anything to eat—which I soon regret, as I feel my dry mouth and my churning stomach.

I find Constantopoulos’s name among the labels by the door of a ten-story building. Someone buzzes me in, and I ride a whirring elevator to the top floor and find a shiny wooden door at the end of the hall. It clicks open as I push, and I enter a reception room lined with blond wood and thick white carpet. I worry that a practice this successful won’t have time for my small concern.

I announce myself to the woman behind the blond-wood counter; she acknowledges me only with a slight lift of her head. She returns to whatever she is doing for a moment, then calls into a phone for Constantopoulos.

“Miss
Braoun
,” she says. “The American.”

Constantopoulos sweeps into reception and takes my hand. He is around fifty years old, very tall and very thin, and he is wearing an elegant suit with cuff links made of a deep-blue stone.

“I’m so sorry, Miss Brown,” he says. “It is too early still. We won’t have the document until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

“But once I sign it, everything is done? I can dispose of the property as I wish?”

“Oh, no,” he says, as if this is not an enormous problem. “It needs to be assessed by the tax authorities, and then you need to pay taxes on whatever is of value.”

“But it’s nothing. Nothing of value,” I say, feeling a slight pang for all of Nestor’s treasures.

“Nevertheless, we still must follow protocol.”

More like you hope I’ll pay you off for not declaring the full value, is what I’m thinking, which is not going to happen.

“Well, great. How long will that take?”

“It’s difficult to say.” He pauses a second, as if to dispose of that issue. “I have the package for you now.”

“What package?”

“As we explained to your mother, Mr. Notaris left an envelope, to be opened only by you.”

“My mother.”

“Yes.”

“Was that protocol, Mr. Constantopoulos, to tell my mother?”

He spreads his manicured hands wide.

“She indicated that she had your authority.”

This explains a lot. She figured she had to act fast, before I saw whatever was in that package.

“I’d like this envelope now, please.”

“Of course, we need to ascertain that there is nothing taxable within it.”

I would kill Jonah if he took this tone with clients.

Constantopoulos ushers me to his office and begs me to sit while he pulls a file from a credenza made of the blond wood that is everywhere. He lays the file open on his desk and turns a few pages of a document that looks puzzlingly familiar. It’s the paper. It’s the same foolscap that Nestor used for his list of song titles and that I used the day before to write up my rules. Suddenly I want to cry, picturing my uncle Nestor at his desk, drawing sheets of thin paper from the top drawer to write his last wishes. It hits me that I am failing him, the way I’m failing everybody else in my life. How can I possibly discharge his wishes, and how can I possibly sort through his things and sort
out everything I have thought and seen and found and done in the last few days?

“Here,” Constantopoulos says, handing me an envelope and a letter opener.

I slice through the crinkling paper.

Constantopoulos peers over. I hold the envelope open so that he can see, as I do now, that there is only what looks like one small sheet of paper, not the usual foolscap, inside.

I open the white sheet and look down at loops of Nestor’s blue ink, but I can’t make out the handwriting. It seems messier than the writing I have seen on Nestor’s boxes and books, and I wonder, with tears welling, if it is because he was ill.

“May I?” Constantopoulos says, seeing my difficulty.

I nod.

Constantopoulos clears his throat and I realize that I have been sitting there for a few moments.

“Can I keep this?”

“Now that it has been read, of course.”

“Can I ask why you didn’t mention this two days ago?”

“We are a large firm, Miss Brown. I apologize that it slipped my mind.”

I restrain myself from a rant that won’t do any good. He puts the folder containing Nestor’s will away and aims a solicitous look at me.

“We will have the Acceptance of Inheritance for you to sign tomorrow. If you return at ten in the morning.”

He escorts me out, as if I were an unruly drinker at a nice restaurant. I make my way to the Internet café near Aliki’s to eat something. I could use a drink, but it’s too early, so I gulp down a coffee and a croissant. It all makes sense now. My mother knew there was an envelope for me; she didn’t tell anyone else about it in case they let me know; that’s why she kept snooping around Nestor’s house. She’s convinced he’s hidden something in there for me and whatever was in the envelope would tell me where and what it is. And that is absolutely what they were arguing about that day in the hospital.

I rush across town and find Aliki and Demetra waiting for me on the corner of Korinthou and Agiou Nikolaou, as we have planned. Aliki is on her cellphone but closes it as she sees me coming. The air has turned balmy since I left this morning. Aliki is wearing a pale-blue gabardine coat over a blue-and-white-striped shirt. It is the brightest clothing I have seen her wear since I arrived.

“I have lots to tell you,” I say.

“Come on,
Theia
Calliope,” Demetra says, and takes my hand.

“I’m coming!” I say, feigning exasperation. I make my arm go limp and let Demetra tug me along. I slow down every now and then to give her something to do.

We can hear the parade as we dash down Agiou Nikolaou to where it crosses Maizonos. And then we see it: a long string of loosely formed bands wearing regional or national costumes. There are musicians from Crete, with black-fringed scarves
tied around the men’s heads; from Epirus, with rich embroidered vests and skirts; and a German oompah band, whose men bravely wear
lederhosen
and feathered hats. When these pass before us—their songs distinct, then blending into cacophony—there is an enormous group of bongo drummers followed by a band of teenagers playing “Mamma Mia” on kazoos. Over all of this noise is the constant pulsing of the music from the city loudspeakers.

“Nestor left me a message,” I say to Aliki, shouting over the music. As I explain it to her, it all sounds like something out of a Victorian novel. I keep remembering the way my mother peered into everything and the way she focused on that little box with the feathers on the top. There’s something in there that she wants to see.

Demetra spots some friends from school on the opposite sidewalk and convinces us to dart across the parade route in between bands so that she can talk to them. A cheer goes up as we negotiate the brief opening between a salsa band and a troupe of Morris dancers in their startling white. It is much cooler here on the shady side of the street, and I turn my collar up for warmth and my mind goes back to Nestor’s words.
What seems important now was once insignificant and will become so again
. True enough, I suppose. Very Zen, even. Or maybe it was an ashes-to-ashes thing. We all think we’re important, but we were babies once and we’ll be worthless again once we’re dead. But that last part doesn’t ring true. Nestor, more than anyone, believed that treasured objects held their value simply because someone had valued them once and because they were the repositories of our stories. The more I puzzle over his note, the more confusing it becomes.

“I’m freezing,” I say to Aliki. I need to do something before I make myself crazy.

“I’m cold too,” she says. “It’s nearly lunchtime, anyhow, Demetraki. Daddy’s eating at home today.”

I wonder whose idea this was: Nikos’s atonement for whatever he did at the Bourbouli, or Aliki’s punishment for it?

We leave the parade behind and head up to the apartment. Demetra collapses melodramatically on the couch before Aliki rouses her to put her coat away. She and I move quietly around the kitchen, getting together the lunch of chicken and stewed vegetables.

“Calliope,” Nikos says, as we are putting the food on the table. “Come help me choose the wine.”

I give him a wry smirk and follow him into the kitchen.

“Do it fast,” Aliki calls. “The chicken’s getting cold.”

“Very funny,” I say to him when we are out of earshot.

He rests his hands on the counter behind him and looks at me for a moment. I can’t read the expression on his face. I have a flash of worry that he is about to tell me bad news—about my mother? Jonah? Has Jonah called here?

“I saw you, cousin, at the Bourbouli.”

His measured tone tells me exactly where and how. My face suddenly burns astoundingly hot.

“It wasn’t me,” I say, fooling no one.

He smiles sadly.

“Look,” he says, “I told you before. I don’t have a problem with infidelities of a certain sort. Especially during Carnival. But I don’t know if you are made of the same stuff, Calliope.”

“You don’t know me that well, Nikos.”

“Better than you think.”

He turns and fishes a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator, holding it up for me to see and then beginning to uncork it.

“He’s a handsome man, I’d say,” Nikos continues.

“Nikos, stop.”

He sets the corkscrew down. “What I really want to tell you is to watch yourself. These little infidelities aren’t as easy as they seem. Trust me.”

“What makes you think I have to be faithful to anyone?”

He gives me an almost sad look, and I realize that of course Aliki has confided in him.

I sit through lunch in a state of nearly unbearable tension. It is unusual for Nikos to return home for the meal, so Aliki is drawing it out, taking time between the chicken and the salad and the vegetables. Nikos sips his wine slowly, appraisingly, and I wonder if he, too, is slowing the meal down—to torture me. When Aliki sighs and pushes her chair back, I jump up to help clear the table and load the dishwasher.

“Listen,” I say to Aliki as I wipe my hands with the dish towel, “I really need to get some stuff done at Nestor’s. If I don’t speed up, I’m going to have to change my flight.”

“Want me to come and help?”

“No. It’s better if I just slog ahead. No distractions.”

I hate lying to her, but I am desperate to be alone.

“If you say so.”

“I’ll call you from there when I’m done. I’m going to stop by my mother’s. I have some questions for her.”

“There’s another dance tonight,” Nikos says. I look at him. “But it’s not a Bourbouli.”

I nod thoughtfully, feigning regret.

“See you later,” I say, grabbing Nestor’s key and my jacket and heading out the door.

M
y uncle was a saver, a hoarder, and an archivist, even a tinkerer. But he was never a puzzler. Now here I am, back at his
house, hanging everything on some scrap of paper or a receipt or a button. I go to the desk and pull out the drawers one by one. Bills, phone books, stacks of stationery, and, in the center drawer, the foolscap Nestor wrote his will on. I riffle through those papers in case I’ve missed something, but all I see is my own English writing, recording lists of boxes. Nothing here. I let out a long, frustrated groan.

I begin to flip through photographs, sorting out any image in which I can’t recognize the all-ages versions of the people. It’s almost six o’clock when I come across a picture of a young man carrying a basket of what look like apples—the same young man I saw in the photographs my mother seemed so eager to have. He is tall and lean, and his hair is dark and straight, cut in that short-back-and-sides style of the war years that gives men a look of rugged grace. It’s like Marcus’s haircut that night we toasted his new job—a night that seems like years ago now.