Let Me Explain You (17 page)

Their father was not dying. Stavroula knew that much. But over the last ten years, something had been breaking his body down. Standing in the funeral home, she could not shake this thought. He had been strong, if stocky. His arms had once been muscular loaves. As a little girl, Stavroula remembered wanting to trace the inoculation scar just below his shoulder, which looked like it might have been left by the fine teeth of a melon baller.

Litza was in the candy dish, unwrapping a butterscotch and putting another in her pocket. The man who shook their hands gave four names, but all Stavroula caught was Gabriel. He wore a three-piece charcoal suit, a pale tie, and shoes that could have been passed down from his father. He smiled through a pencil mustache and wrinkles that seemed carved by many years of crying along with the bereaved. He had no body fat, as if that were a luxury in this business.

“Please let me offer anything in the way of your comfort,” Gabriel said. His voice was like the skin of a tree after the bark has been peeled away. That alone might have encouraged him to become a funeral director. His accent worked in his favor, sort of like her father's.

Gabriel showed them into his office. Instead of sitting behind his desk, he sat in a plush chair. They sat on the couch, Litza closer to him. Stavroula could tell why her father had chosen Gabriel and this place. You were ushered into eternal rest here. Bright cream walls and French tapestry. A heavy, gold curtain separated them from the other rooms, cinched at the center so that they could see only a sliver of what was to come. The fireplace crackled—a solitary log—and at her elbow stood a bowl of cherries that she thought were plastic. A second look told her they were unseasonably ripe. It was the first time she had ever mistaken real food for fake.

On the coffee table were two mugs, a kettle, and a platter of shortbread. Stavroula picked a piece up and began to nibble. She missed what Litza said. In response, Gabriel was saying, “I see. That is strange. What might I do to ease the anxiety for you and your sister?” He was leaning into Litza, which was what Litza was able to get most men to do: even this dignified funeral director was attracted to the messy hair begging to be tamed at this difficult time, the knee-high leather black boots with buckles. Stavroula had to hand it to her sister, she knew what she was doing. Stavroula started a second shortbread. Sweet, with some rock salt. Relieved, because Litza was taking care of all the speaking.

Stavroula did not want to be here, why had she agreed to come? She kept her ankles crossed and tried to appear like Litza—on the verge of bereft. Litza could get away with stories, or prying, or whatever this was.

“I'm just looking for answers,” Litza was saying. “It feels like we've lost him already.” The words came out puckered. Stavroula appreciated how Litza could make herself into a mourner. Maybe had always been one.

Gabriel cupped both hands over his knees, where his fingers ran down to his shins. Stavroula found herself believing the gesture. On second thought, maybe he was not responding to Litza's body: or maybe he was responding, but only in a way that saw what she was trying to do with it and gently, gently rejecting her. “Ah, you poor girls. This must be very disorienting for your family.”

“He's proud, you know? He doesn't want anyone to see him suffer.”

“Yes, we die the way we live, is how the philosophers explain it.”

“Some days I wake up and I think, There's no way we're going to lose him. Some days I think, He will go back to being the father we once knew.”

Gabriel poured tea. The cups tinked as he placed the saucers in front of them. His eyes insisted on meeting Stavroula's, then Litza's. “The terrible truth,” he proffered, “is that we get only one father. And when he is gone, however he goes, he leaves inside us a hole that tells us we were very much loved.”

Litza seemed prepared to reply—then, a feeling took over the room—like something being dropped and then caught, midair. Litza couldn't recover, it seemed, and there was an untenable silence. Stavroula watched Gabriel take Litza's hand in his. It was a clean hand, unblemished. Everything about it seemed cared for, even the three dark strands of hair close to his wrist. She could imagine his fingers crumbling dry chamomile.

Litza interlaced her fingers with Gabriel's.

Stavroula lowered her eyes. She returned her half-eaten biscuit to the plate. She waited. She heard a scratch in Litza's voice. “You can't tell us where he is?” she asked.

He said, “I do not know.”

“What's going to happen?”

“What will happen is the sun will come out for your father, or the clouds. There will be music he loves. You and your sister will tell stories about him that people have forgotten, and those stories will carry you forward, each time giving the memory of your father a new life. What is going to happen is that you will consider your father's final wishes, and you will honor his best days on his last day.”

“Please,” Litza said. “We just want to know his plans.”

Gabriel walked to his desk and brought back a book bound in leather. A silk bookmark kept the page of their father's funeral—marked in pencil, open-ended. Gabriel turned the book so that they could read it. He said, “Your father and I have been speaking often. I will be making arrangements with the place of disposition as he requires. He is choosing, himself, to arrange for clergy and musician honorariums elsewhere.”

Litza studied the notes. “So the funeral's not here?”

“He is still considering his preferences for public memorial. Only the private family funeral will be held here, when the time comes.”

Litza leaned back. She said, “How much will it cost?”

Gabriel smiled, which deepened the creases and the look of compassion. “Your father did not want to burden you with those worries.”

“So he's paid you for private services, for some time in the future, and he's got a public service that will be held at some undetermined location?”

He nodded. Gabriel gently tipped his attention to Stavroula. “Please, if you can, Stevie, explain.”

She shook her head, Explain what?

“What you are feeling?”

Stavroula unhinged her mouth. He was shifting his gaze from her eyes to her mouth and back to her eyes. She said, “I don't know.”

Gabriel shut the book. “That is also how I felt about my father's death, and that is still what I feel.” He guided Stavroula's hand to Litza's and said, “Your sister, she may not know what she is feeling, either.”

Stavroula kept her hand there a second, took it back as soon as she could.

He led them out. He said, “If your father is found, please call us at your earliest convenience.” He shut the door with both hands, a soft click. He was still in the window when Litza caught up with Stavroula.

Stavroula took several breaths. She couldn't get enough air, she felt sick. Like the time she had to skin frogs—the only kind of butchery she could not handle, the only kind of meat she did not eat. There was something wrong about a frog without skin—it wasn't itself, it looked too much like poultry. That green skin was all it had and it knew it, because it wouldn't let go. You had to work your finger between muscle and skin, peel it from the flesh.

It was getting a little better, the farther they got from the funeral parlor. Her heart was hers again, she did not feel so panicky. She realized how stifling it had been, how strange Gabriel was, how he seemed to read their minds. How much—truly—he reminded her of a skinned frog.

“Should we pay the mistress a visit?” Litza asked.

All Stavroula had on her mind was a shower, sleep, to wake up to an annoying voicemail from her father saying he had lost everything in the will in a single round of blackjack just to spite them, and to return to life before the letter. Whereas Litza was treating this like it was a scavenger hunt. Go see the mistress? What did Litza expect to get out of that?

“I don't want to see her,” Stavroula said.

“OK, how about lunch?”

No. No. How had she put herself back in this position? That familiar, sinking feeling that Litza was wanting too much from her, was skinning
her
. Isn't this why she cut her off in the first place?

“They're expecting me at work.”

“Just come for a few minutes, I'll show you this last thing.”

“What is it?”

“It won't take long.”

Stavroula couldn't tell what was happening with Litza behind those glasses. Litza was already lighting the next cigarette. Stavroula got into her car and rolled down the window for Litza, who was still standing there. She was about to say that Litza would have to do the rest of this on her own, Stavroula was going home, but there was Litza's shaking hand, just inches from her face. Litza said, “Wasn't Gabriel sexy for an undertaker?” and then got into her own car.

Twenty minutes later they were drinking coffee in another diner in another town.

A version of Marina comes out of the kitchen doors, and a version of their father—Asian—greets the customers. There are pastries and cakes and menus that flip open like invitational brochures. There is a shimmering bakery case, the shelves rotating. Cutouts of colored eggs and rabbits taped to the glass. The locals call to each other across the tables, but customers who are just passing through treat their booths like private, enclosed automobiles. The diner feels like a version of the Gala that has been sold and remodeled, under new management. It occurs to Stavroula that when that happens—whether that's this Sunday, two days away, or years into the future—all evidence of her father, except her, maybe, and her sisters, will disappear from the world.

Litza is taking as much sugar with her coffee as she pleases. Five, six packets. She pulls something from her bag for Stavroula to see. It is not typed, like the others. It is not sent out through email or posted on Facebook. It is real. It is unfolded. Stavroula reads too much, which is one word, the salutation, and then every line. Despite herself, she reads the whole letter. For a moment, she believes that the letter has come to them from beyond the grave. It spooks her.

It is as if she has seen her father's naked back at a moment he is attempting to cover it. She feels her father trying to arrange his face so that his children do not see the weakness in him—inevitable, like dropping fruit. That's when Stavroula realized that if something actually were wrong, Litza would be making the case that it wasn't. Nothing would convince Litza that their father might be innocent enough to be weak or aging or mortal. If he were in a hospital bed. If the deed were an autopsy report. If this letter were sanctified by God and anointed him a prophet. And then, a strange thought. If there were a difficult decision to make—whatever, whenever that might be—Stavroula would be the one to make it. If someone had to say,
He's dead
, it must be her.

Then the thought comes to Stavroula: this is wrong. Knowing how Litza will react, she slides the letter back.

Why is Stavroula here? She comes out of love. She comes out of obligation. She worries about her sister. She wants to know what is happening to her father, which until now has been a joke. This, she understands, is the source of Litza's excitement. Finding the will, tearing through his records, it felt like stealing old doughnuts out of the diner Dumpster when no one was looking, and stuffing the hardened sugary masses into their sleeves to eat at night after they brushed their teeth.

But, why is Stavroula here? She comes to see Litza without having to admit she misses her. She comes to recapture the fun of their childhood, faltering as it was. She comes to not learn what's happening to her father—a deed, a will, these papers and arrangements are useful distractions. Close enough to the question without actually being the question. She comes to not think about what she is capable, or incapable, of. She can be so cold, with veins of vinegar. What if she does not mourn him at all when the time comes? What if, after years of shutting him out—his words, his cowardice—she has shut him out forever? What if she is colder than her sister, who at least has anger for grief? She comes because she denied him his Last Supper. She comes to know that her father is not actually dying.

This letter, though. Like breaking apart the doughnut only to discover what's inside is not filling or custard, but maggots.

“You shouldn't have taken it.”

Litza's face falls. Whatever fun they were having, it is over. Litza is outraged that Stavroula might treat their father's pain more seriously than her own. Stavroula knows this is what's going on, because this is what's always going on for Litza. Reluctantly, Stavroula knew Litza better than Litza knew herself.

Litza says, “Suddenly you feel bad for him?”

Stavroula can't help it; Stavroula does.

A waiter appears with a slice of pie and two forks but knows not to interrupt. He places the dish on the corner of the adjacent table, within reach. He is slim, with fingers probably suited to play the piano, but he is here, wasting that talent. Maybe he is the owner's son.