The Clover House (30 page)

They sat down at the base of an apple tree, with Skourtis’s arms around her.

“I wish you didn’t have to do all this work around the farm.”

“I’m not a guest, Clio. I need to earn my keep.”

“But you’re not a laborer.”

“I work with my hands.”

“You’re an artist.” She caressed his fingers, noting his carefully trimmed nails. “I’m going to be an artist,” she said, blushing at the admission. “Or a dancer. Or an actress.”

“Oh?”

“When the war’s over, I’m going to the School of the Arts, and then I’ll make my way to Athens.”

He laughed.

“I’m serious.”

“Your parents know about this?”

“Of course.”

The truth was more complicated, though. Even before the war, she had begun to feel as though her dreams for her future were fantasies she had outgrown. All her notions of performing or being the center of attention were starting to reveal themselves as something different. It wasn’t the dream of the crowd itself that she wanted; it was the solitude and the isolation that allowed the dream. That was what she was drawn to, like the hours she spent alone in Hollywood, watching and unseen. How could she say this now to Lambros? He would think she was a fool. And maybe she was, since she didn’t even know what it was that she wanted.

She stood up and held the ends of the scarf with outstretched arms and made a few graceful passes on pointed toes.

“Let me make something for you,” he said.

“A gown?” He could make her one just like her mother’s.
“A gown for you to take the stage in,” he said, standing and coming toward her. “I’ll tailor it just for you. To match your figure.”

He ran his hand up her side beneath her jacket.

Over the next few days, Clio watched Skourtis around the farm, looking for hints of frailty or delicacy in him—something to justify his civilian state. This was the story she had decided on: that Skourtis possessed some inner weakness—of body, not of character—and that he suppressed a noble frustration at not being able to fight for his country. Despite this frailty, and because of it, he worked so hard and so companionably alongside Vlachos, a man who would make most people uneasy.

But Clio couldn’t deny that the truth was otherwise. Skourtis, in fact, did not work particularly hard. She saw him one day sitting on the woodpile, rolling a cigarette in those long fingers of his. As soon as Vlachos appeared at the edge of the farmyard, Skourtis popped up and began to haul logs into his arms. Clio saw Vlachos squint at him and mutter something before he crouched down, took up four thick logs in a burly embrace, and placed them in the cart. Turning her gaze back to Skourtis, she noticed how unbalanced his load was, even after days of experience, and how he himself still tottered beneath a far lighter weight than what Vlachos had just lifted. Once the cart was full, Vlachos stepped into the yoke and began to tug it across the farmyard toward the kitchen. As soon as he was out of sight, Skourtis sat back down on the pile to smoke.

She drew her cardigan closed around her neck and stepped outside. Skourtis stood when he saw her coming.

“Miss Notaris.”

“Why won’t you pretend for me?”

“What?”

“You pretended for Vlachos. I saw you. Why won’t you pretend for me?”

“Ah.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Because I’m a little afraid of Mr. Vlachos, truth be told.”

“You’re not afraid of me?”

He pulled her to him, looking around to see that no one was watching. She stepped back.

“If I could see you, Lambros, what makes you think no one else can?”

“Fine. Come into the barn, then.”

He drew himself up, stretching his arms above his head as if to ease some strain, and strolled around the corner. Clio followed him but remained at the edge of the barn’s dim space, one foot on each side of the shadow line.

“Why don’t you work?” she said.

“I have an ailment,” he said. “Weak lungs. Otherwise”—he shook his head ruefully—“I would be in Albania shooting Italians with the best of them. I didn’t want you to know.”

She cocked her head.

“It’s true,” he said. He reached his arms out toward her. “Listen.”

He beckoned for her. She hesitated but then stepped into the barn’s shadow.

“Here.” He pulled his jacket open and undid one of the buttons of his shirt. He placed his long fingers on her cheeks, turned her head sideways, and pressed her ear to his bare chest. She drew a deep breath.

“Shh,” he said, and pressed her head closer. “Do you hear it?”

She had no idea what to listen for. The beating of his heart was all she heard, that and her own intake of breath, as if she
were breathing through her ear. His heartbeat seemed so inconsequential, nothing more than a bird’s wing fluttering against a window, his body so slight for all its sudden immediacy. This was the body she would consign to frigid air, to snow, to bayonets and guns.

“Did you hear it?”

“Yes,” she said.

He held her head there for a moment longer and then tilted her away. With an apologetic look, he buttoned his shirt again and pulled his jacket tight. He shivered a little.

“Don’t tell your father, will you? I don’t want him to think I’m weak.”

“I won’t.”

Clio wondered what she had heard. A weak heart? Weak lungs? A heart—his or hers—fluttering with the excitement of nearness? She couldn’t be sure. But she couldn’t stop thinking about that moment. The shadow on one side of the barn door, the light on the other, and Skourtis with his arms outstretched, his shirt open to reveal his vulnerable chest. Nothing like that had ever happened to her. The more she thought of it, the more she was certain nothing like that ever would again.

When Skourtis asked her a few days later whether she would accept his tailoring of a gown, she said yes. The next day, she took the mirror down from the wall in the bedroom she shared with Sophia.

“Where are you going with that?”

“Never mind.”

She couldn’t tell Sophia or anyone about the gown. She felt that to explain it she would have to describe that moment by the barn. Even if she were capable of conveying the moment, no one else could possibly understand.

She met Skourtis in a small room at the back of the house,
bringing first Sophia’s mirror down and then another one from Nestor’s room. She waited until after lunch, when everyone was supposed to be resting, and changed into one of her mother’s dresses, a sleeveless silk in a deep blue that Urania had long ago told Clio could be hers. Together, she and Skourtis set the mirrors up at an angle to each other and placed a small crate before them. Skourtis reached out his hand, and Clio saw again the image of him at the edge of the barn’s shadow, reaching his arms out toward her. She took his hand and stepped up onto the crate.

“Plenty of extra,” he said, pinching the fabric in at the sides and looking her up and down.

She turned as he instructed while he sketched lines with chalk along her sides, her neck, and her hem. He made the neckline dip down, the back dip even more but not too much, and turned the shoulders of the dress into three-inch-wide straps. As he worked, first with the chalk and then with pins, his hands skimmed over her hips, her thighs, her breasts.

“That tickles,” she whispered.

“Sorry.”

He crouched to pin the hem and she touched his hair. She wanted to place her hands on either side of his head, as he had done to her. If he stood up close to her, she would kiss him.

He moved behind her.

“The zipper will go here.”

She felt his finger drawing down along her spine, slowly, over each bone. She arched her back as the press of his finger reached down almost to her bottom.

“Isn’t that a little low?”

“It’s the latest fashion, I assure you.”

He spun her around so she was facing the mirrors.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

He reached down into his tailor’s box and pulled up a length of gold braid.

“This,” he said, holding it up to the neckline, “will make the gown almost as beautiful.”

“Where did you get that?”

“I don’t know. Around.”

“Around where?”

Skourtis shrugged and ran the braid through his hands, flicking his fingers as if water were trickling over them.

“Lambros, this is my brother’s. You can’t have it.”

“Don’t you want it for your gown?”

“Not at his expense. It’s from his Scout uniform.”

“He doesn’t need it, does he? Anyway, he should be wearing Metaxas blue.”

She reached for the braid, managing to pull it from his hand. He grabbed at her and then made a sort of gasping groan. She let go.

He laughed and held the gold braid above his head.

“I thought you were in pain.”

“No.”

“But your lungs.”

“It’s just for fun, Clio.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but you had no right to take that.”

“I was only making you look glamorous.”

“It’s my brother’s.”

“I confiscated it to give to you.”

She slapped him. From her position on the crate, she swung across and slightly downward in a blow of some force. Skourtis staggered back, one hand still holding the braid aloft, and the other clasped to his cheek.

“Now how do your lungs feel?” she asked. “Or was it your heart? I can’t quite remember.”

He dropped the braid on the floor.

“You’re a coward and a thief. Get out of our house,” she said quietly. “Or I will find someone to haul you away so you can die in Albania where you belong.”

Skourtis didn’t move for a moment, and Clio had a flash of fear that he would hurt her. It was clear to her now that he was not frail at all but lazy and scared. Finally, he swept his hair back over his forehead, pulled his sleeves down, and gathered up his things. He closed the door softly behind him. Clio picked up her brother’s gold braid, sat on the crate, and listened to her heart pounding.

Callie

Thursday

Now, the morning after my fling with Stelios, which is what I have decided to call it, my head is pounding and I have bruises on my hips, my knees, and my left elbow. Sitting in the chair at Nestor’s desk, I can see straight ahead to the hall and to the doorway to the dining room. At some point last night, Stelios made a comment about the dining room table and chairs, whose claw feet were right by his head. “More wealth for my heiress,” he said, running a hand along the carvings. I grabbed his wrist and pinned it to the floor. “I’m not your heiress,” I said. “You don’t own me.”

“No, but, seriously,” he said later as we were getting dressed. “Do you own this place too?”

“I told you. I don’t own anything. We lost it all after the war.”

But now that I have been to Constantopoulos’s office again this morning, that is no longer true. I have signed Calliope Notaris Brown to the Acceptance of Inheritance form, and I have agreed to take possession of everything inside this house.
The claw-foot table, the claw-foot chairs, the rug Stelios and I rumpled beneath us, and the vase I held on to so it wouldn’t be shaken to the floor: All these are mine. They are all markers now—of the end of Nestor’s life and the end of something in my own.

I toy with Nestor’s pen, flipping it around on the sheet of blank foolscap I have set out on the desk. If I don’t do something, I will start to cry—the kind of crying that, like vomiting, shocks you with your inability to control it, disgusts you with your body’s betrayal. It’s not the sex I mind. In fact, what bothers me is the likelihood that the sex is irrelevant to my relationship with Jonah. If we’re over, it’s because of bigger issues than a one-night stand.

I push the chair from the desk and head into the living room. I need to do something to keep my mind from thinking about all this. There is something here in this house, I am sure of it. I start on one side of the room, looking impatiently through boxes whose contents have now become familiar. After a few moments, I see a small box upside down by my foot. I remember Stelios laughing, reaching behind him for support, and then the feeling of something ticklish, like paper, brushing against my hip. I grab the box to set it right and see beneath it the black feathers from the other day. Crouching, I gather up the rest of the box’s contents that have spilled onto the floor: a piece of dirty white silk, a woman’s ring, a brass-colored bullet, and the four black feathers, which I now see are roughly six inches long.

So this is the box that my mother has been looking for. But it could easily pass for a box of garbage. While all of Nestor’s boxes contain objects of the same category, this one has no apparent meaning, no system determining what it holds. And yet
this one has held my mother’s attention ever since she first glimpsed it. She seems in fact to have
recognized
it. There is a story here that I have not yet understood.

I sit down on the floor and concentrate on the contents. Each item leaves me more confused than the last. The feathers lead me to think of the farm, and the silk turns my mind to the city. Again, the silk is dirty, with what look like rust stains on it, and this leads me to question how it could ever connect to a ring with a rectangular topaz stone set into a thin gold band. Then there is the bullet, which seems to cancel every possible attempt at connection. I can think of no way to put these things together.