The Clover House (44 page)

I haven’t had a chance to speak with her alone since yesterday, though I’m not sure what I would say if I could. She doesn’t need my sympathy; she doesn’t seem to want it. And there are no more questions I can ask except to push her on the one remaining mystery from her life during the war: What did she do to make the Germans leave her and Nestor alive? That
event lies at the center of the story, like some minotaur lurking at the heart of a labyrinth. But I can’t slay that monster for her. It’s not mine to slay. There’s no thread my mother can unspool to lead me to the labyrinth’s core. And even if there were, she would cut it.

Yet Nestor wanted her to tell me this story. This is the part I can’t quite understand. I look at my mother again, wondering why Nestor would insist on revealing their shared guilt, and I feel I am missing a lesson he very much wanted me to learn. I don’t believe he wanted to punish her. He would have simply told me the secret himself if that was all he wanted. No, he wanted to make it so that my mother and I could speak of this, in some way, together. He wanted some message to pass from her to me.

But what if Nestor was wrong? What if it would have been better for me, safer for me somehow, not to know? What if my mother is trying to protect me now by keeping me away from the deepest heart of her sadness?

The priests disappear and for a moment it is quiet; people clear their throats and shuffle their feet as if getting ready, but I don’t know for what. Then the priests reappear from behind the icon-covered altar screen, now wearing vestments of somber black. It is Lent. The crowd begins to press forward, spilling out of the pews toward the altar as the priests move toward them. Our row moves out into the aisle and joins the gentle pushing. The teenager and her father bow their heads, their hands clasped before them. I look back to Nikos for instruction; he thrusts his chin out, telling me to go forward. I nudge Demetra along by the shoulders, easing her into the crowd.

I see now that we are asking the priest for forgiveness. One by one, people bow their heads to him and kiss his hand.

“Forgive me,” he says, “a sinner.”

They repeat his words to him and move on.

When it is my turn, I stifle thoughts of my religious hypocrisy and remind myself that I have come here willingly.

“Forgive me,” I mumble, “a sinner.” Mimicking Demetra, who has gone ahead of me, I touch my lips lightly to the smooth skin of the priest’s hand and turn slowly away.

A woman near me leans in and kisses me on the cheek. She says the priest’s phrase and looks at me with an expectant smile. Startled, I repeat her phrase and she nods, satisfied. Everyone around me is repeating the same words; we are all asking for forgiveness and granting it to those around us. I exchange kisses with Demetra, Nikos, and Aliki, and then turn to my mother.

“Forgive me, a sinner,” I say, giving her a kiss on each cheek.

“Forgive me, a sinner,” she says.

She looks at me and gives me a tiny tilt of the head, part shrug, part question.

We are among the first to emerge from the cathedral, spilling down the stairs into a city that is strangely quiet for the first time since I arrived. From Plateia Georgiou, a woman’s voice booms over a megaphone, announcing the winners of the Treasure Hunt. Down by the harbor, the first tentative fireworks are crackling up into the twilight. Near the cathedral, firecrackers pop.

Nikos tries to convince the aunts to stay for the display and for the burning of the Carnival King on a float in the harbor, but they say they prefer to watch the fireworks on television. Thalia, Sophia, and my mother draw close to one another, and, the next thing I know, they have said good night to us and are walking off together, three small but upright bodies in the swirling crowd. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know what shift or compromise has occurred to let the other two
embrace the third. But perhaps it just comes down to the fact that it is still their city, after all, and they walk through it together as though nothing can alter their place in it.

As we head for the harbor, we are joined by Marina and Phillipos and some other friends of Aliki’s and Nikos’s, whom I recognize from our entrance into the cathedral. A group of nearly a dozen now, adults and children, we make our way down crowded streets to the sea, running the last bit as a cluster of giant golden blossoms bursts over the Gulf of Patras.

B
ack at the apartment, I clean up the kitchen while Nikos and Aliki settle Demetra down from the day’s excitement. I keep thinking about Agios Andreas, the saints’ big eyes, the sweet incense clouds, and the murmurings of
forgive me
humming beneath the giant dome. My own murmur too. Did it mean anything, or was I, like Demetra, simply repeating the phrase without really understanding it? I start drying the dinner plates and notice, with some surprise, that there’s a tremble in my hands. I realize suddenly that I need to call Jonah. It’s his forgiveness I need now.

I wait until everyone has gone to sleep, and I pick up the phone. It’s dinnertime for Jonah, and I expect to catch him boiling up some pasta before he heads out for the last night of the weekend.

“It’s me,” I tell him.

“Yeah.”

“We need to talk.”

“Okay.”

He is waiting, but I don’t know where to begin. Finally, he is the one who starts.

“I changed some meetings around so I could leave early on
Tuesday. I’m going to meet you at home.” The word hangs in the air.

“Why?”

“Why? Because I agree with you,” he says. “We need to talk.”

“Jonah.” He’s waiting. But I can’t finish.

“Callie. What is it?”

“I just needed to hear your voice.”

“Okay.” He pauses. “What’s going on, Callie?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to hear your voice.” My own voice tightens up now, and I’m afraid he can tell that I’m about to cry.

“Callie, you’re freaking me out a little. What’s going on?”

“Jonah, I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. We can do it when I get back.”

“You called me, remember?”

“I know.”

There’s a long silence.

“I think you’d better tell me now,” he says.

I think about all the times in the past that I kept things from him—not even big things like this—and about how much of myself I held apart. There’s an enormous cost to coming clean now. I could lose him, right when I’ve discovered he’s what I want.

“Okay,” I say. “I slept with someone.” He says nothing. “Jonah,” I almost whisper. “Did you hear me?”

“Jesus, Callie. I heard you. Want to say it louder?”

“No, Jonah. I didn’t want to tell you now, over the phone. But I want you to know that I screwed up. And I want to talk to you about it.”

“Shit, Callie.”

“I’m sorry.” I try to say the words so that they’ll mean something.

“Just so I know,” he says, after a pause, “are you still wearing my ring?”

“Yes.” I don’t know whether that’s the answer he was looking for.

There’s a very long silence. I brace myself.

“What the fuck, Callie,” he says finally. “What are you doing? I thought we were okay. I thought we were good, actually. That’s why I proposed. Because it was good.”

“It
was
good.”

“So why did you fuck it up?” I can tell he wants to shout but he won’t allow himself. As if the lawyer in him is preventing a show of weakness.

“I don’t know, Jonah. I just want a chance to talk about it.”

“You slept with someone.”

“Yes.”

The silence is so long that I really think we may have been cut off.

“Look,” he says finally, and his voice is flat. “I don’t know what you want to do when you get back, but I don’t expect you to find someplace else from there. Maybe I can go to Ted’s again. I’ll let you know.”

“Oh.” I wait until my own voice is steady and start again. “Okay. Should I get the T to Charles Street, then, on Tuesday?” What I’m asking is if it’s all right if I show up at our door.

“Sure. But I don’t know what happens after that.”

“It didn’t mean anything, Jonah. You know that.”

“I do know that. And that’s the worst part, Callie. That you would do it for no reason. It’s like I don’t mean anything. Like
we
don’t. I almost wish you’d fallen in love with some guy.
At least then I wouldn’t feel like some asshole whose fiancée cheated on him just for the sex. God, Callie. I need to hang up.”

“Okay,” I say, and the sound is barely finished when I hear the click of the phone.

Callie

Clean Monday

The waiters push three small tables together for us to make one large one, smoothing the fresh paper coverings down and holding them fast with large plastic clips. They swing chairs over and grind them down into the gravel patio. Like croupiers, they slide salt and pepper shakers and glass trays of toothpicks into place around the table. Nikos sits at the head and motions to the rest of us to take our seats, three a side. I am in the middle, opposite Demetra, with Thalia and Aliki opposite each other at the ends. Nikos has given my mother and Sophia the honored seats near him.

We are at a taverna, on a bluff overlooking Rio and the piers for the new bridge, eating our big meal for Clean Monday. It is a warm day, made even warmer by the large propane heaters placed at intervals around the restaurant. The place is filling up. The waiters perform the same merging of tables for one family group after another, until each one is like an island, separated from the others by large amounts of empty space.

Nikos navigates the Lenten menu for us, choosing grilled shrimp, stuffed squid, bean soup, and several vegetable salads—all
free of the blood and eggs and milk that are prohibited for the next forty days. We make small talk while we pick at the flat loaf of
lagana
, the Lenten bread, and then the wine comes and Nikos raises his glass to make a toast.

“Geia mas,”
he says. “To our health. And may we all be together again for next year’s Carnival. And may Nestor—God bless him—be in our thoughts always.”

“Geia mas,”
we all say, clinking glasses.

Aliki bows her head and I hear her say,
“Amín.”

The aunts ask me about my work at Nestor’s house and I tell them what Aliki and I decided this morning. Everything is done. Aliki and I have agreed on what should be given away, and we’ve arranged for the church to come and collect the donation next week. She will keep the photographs and films and some of the recordings in the small attic space that Nestor never used. When she and Nikos build the second story, they’ll have even more space to store what will amount to a family archive. I’m mostly packed for my departure. She’s going to ship the case of sand to me in Boston, in packaging she promises me will keep the vials safe. Nikos has offered to drive me to Athens; we are leaving at seven tomorrow morning.

I want to talk to the aunts, to tell them I have pieced the story together and it’s more complicated than they realize. But their placid smiles and their concentration on the rituals of the day signal that this is neither the place nor the time. Perhaps there is no good place or time to sum up people’s lives for them.

Nikos hands me the eggplant salad, and I fork some out onto my plate before passing it to my mother. There’s a new quietness in her mood that I can’t read. Demetra stands up to reach for some
lagana
out of the basket.

“Katse,”
Thalia says gently. “Sit down. Do you have your kite ready?”

“Yes,” Demetra says. “Will you help me with it? Calliope, will you help too?”

“Sure, I’ll come. But let your grandmother have the first turn.”

Demetra nods and munches on her bread.

“You should have seen the kites we had when we were kids,” Thalia says to Demetra, but with a winking eye to my mother and Sophia.

“I’ve seen the pictures,” Demetra says.

“Ah, but the real thing,” says my mother. “Your great-grandfather used to make them himself, out of silk.”

“And your aunt Clio used to paint them,” Sophia adds.

I look back and forth between the sisters, but there is no hint in their faces of the troubles of the past. Only their pleasure—boastful pleasure, on my mother’s part—in regaling the little girl with tales from their youth. And Demetra is properly enchanted, though I’m sure this is not the first time these old women have told her about their handmade kites. It’s likely, in fact, that this conversation repeats itself every year on Clean Monday, the old women and the little girl alike going along with it as if it were brand new.

Demetra fetches her kite from the large bag Nikos has placed by his side. She holds it proudly out in front of her while we all exclaim at its beauty. The kite is made of blue paper, with cat’s eyes painted on each side and a long green tail. All around us, the other families enact the same scene, hexagonal homemade kites appearing among the tables like flowers blossoming in an accelerated spring. We exchange glances with the other families, approving of each child’s kite but also sizing it up to be certain that our own is the most striking. There is a general movement among the tables now, as children carry their kites out to the park beside the restaurant, accompanied
by a father or grandfather or uncle. The rest of us push our chairs back with a crunch of gravel and pour more wine to sip as we watch.