Let Me Explain You (38 page)

In their search for answers, she had not been honest with Litza. She had not really been looking—was it really just three days ago? Litza had been the one ransacking his office, Stavroula had only been playing. Now, using her father's birthdate, she opened the safe. She knew where he kept the cash in case anything should happen to him. Inside, three thousand. Also, his passport. He had not run.

Her father's sweater was draped over the back of his chair. It felt worn and familiar, scratchy but warm. Or almost warm. It must have been the smell that was familiar, because it stank of Saratogas. He only ever wore this sweater in the office. He didn't even hang it on the hook behind the door but left it on this chair. He wanted to be a man who only ever appeared in a suit jacket, but as he got older, he found sweaters tending. Stavroula could tell this embarrassed him.

What did it say about her, a daughter who knew for days—in her gut—that her father was gone? What did it say about her that she declined his invitation to dinner, knowing he truly believed it to be his last?

Marina and the
pappas
were loud, suddenly. She peered through the portal to see them arguing. The glass blurred their faces, but she could see waving arms. In disputes, all Greeks become their hands.

Stavroula leaned back in the chair. She pulled the sweater around her shoulders but did not put her arms in the sleeves. When her father's voice came to her in a furling accent, it said,
I don't like to be so chilly
.

She closed her eyes to that voice, but smelled it anyway. The smoke.

The day he caught her and Litza in the office with the will, he cornered her. Litza escaped, taking her copy of the book on grief, but Stavroula stayed to see what he would say to her face. In her own way she was being confrontational, because she made herself a brick wall. What she got was
Oh, Stavroula, your poor father, Oh, Stavroula, help me pick out my coffin, it is nothing more than a box and would take only a few minutes of online shopping together. Then you be my date and we go to a special restaurant for octopus and you can whisper to me if the cooks are as good as us.
She simply said, No. No, I can't help you. He tried this, he tried that. Kindly, severely, each time she said no. She would not give him what he wanted. Her reasons were unclear even to herself. Old redresses, things she could not or did not want to remember.

Part of her considered saying yes, the part of her that had always wanted a father, someone who knew what she liked to eat and encouraged her to pick the place. Though, of course, he did not realize that octopus was her favorite: coincidentally, it was also one of his favorites. Nonetheless, part of her was thawing, warmed by pity and concern. This man—
her father
, she told herself—was so sad at this stage in his life. So alone. He was cured meat, but still you could tell what he once was. That he once had roiling hot blood in him.

Are you on your Woman Thing?
he asked.
Don't be bitter, I only ask because your No is like an ax to my face.

“Your mistress got rid of you, huh?”

She was not trying to be hostile, but this was how he took it. Well, yes, she was trying to be hostile, and that's what made him get mean. He said,
Do you know what is a man? No, just because you look like one you think you do. You are not a man, you are only a woman with mannish hair.
He had said things like this all her life, so she knew how to be brick. He shouted, but she did not relent. That was the victory, not giving in, and he saw she was winning. The only thing she could not help, the smile that uncurled itself. It made him mad. Out of the kind of desperation she had seen in animals giving their last futile kick, he shot back at her,
I should have walked away from you in your box
, re, left you for good from
the day you were born.
It did not surprise her to hear this. It made it easier to walk away, herself. She was glad—so glad—she had never taken anything from him.

But these were a father's last words to his daughter? Even he would regret them. Or did she just want to believe so?

Stavroula touched the mouse for his desktop, gently. The screen came to life. She did not know his password. She thought for a moment, then typed STAVROS. That was all she needed, the computer took her to his email account.

There was a message already open. It was from the day before his disappearance—Day 6, according to the subject line—but had never been sent.

It was addressed to her.

Dear My Oldest, My First. My Stavroula.

You know the story of your birth, I have told it to you many times, how you were only three pounds. But you cannot know that I hold you in my hand, very new, very small. Like a paper clip, the way your body came folded up. Your leg was the same size as my thumb. Which it is big for a thumb, not for a leg, no. For a leg, it says, This child will not survive. But you do. Like your father, you live to survive.

There is so much more for me to explain you. But we don't have all the time in the world anymore. You look for Your Father on the ground as a seed, but he will be in the sky as a tree.

Stavroula, like your father, you make your own path in a way that maybe others cannot. Ruby, your sister, cannot go out so far on her own. Litza, your sister, goes out so much that she is like one of those planets you cannot even see with your naked eye. You ask, always, Why is the father so hard on Stavroula? But what is hardship when it makes us who we are?

Some things, Stavroula, I should never say.

Remember me, Stavroula. For yes, my pride. But also for you, because Stavroula is deserving of a past as much as anyone. The only thing I am asking, yes, I dare to ask, is How can you bury me? And help your sisters and your mother and all of the people who love and refuse Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, to bury him? I am asking, How can I be present, future, but especially past, as you are my present, my future, and especially my past?

It is no little burden to carry your father to the end of his day, because it also means carrying him to the end of yours. And in this, I cannot walk with you.

But I can tell you what to do. And, for once in your life: listen.

Here is my last last request:

Gather everybody here, Sunday at 12:00. Tell them, Take this, It is my father's daily special. It is very good. Give them wine and tell them, Take this, it is my father's sweat. It is all he has built of his life. Say to them, Eat with me, and you eat with my father/

That was it. The cursor blinked on
father
, as if waiting for him to finish. She scanned the letter once more. His last, last request. Something told her there would be another letter tomorrow, and another one after that, and she would wake up to letters for the rest of her life. Requests she had not fulfilled. His Oldest, his First, the one he should have abandoned at birth. Her head was fizzy with the sweater's stale smoke. It was too much. She covered her face, and began to take deep, gulping, smothered breaths. She wanted to escape into the cold air.

And in this, I cannot walk with you.
But wasn't she always on her own?

Stavroula sat a minute, two minutes. She listened to the
pappas
and Marina still arguing. She thought about Litza. What would Litza do with this plea?
Say to them, Eat with me, and you eat with my father.

She adjusted the sweater so that it covered more of her. Her chest relaxed. Her throat was sore with the residual smoke.

She opened a new file. She typed:

I
N
M
EMORIAM,

P
LEASE JOIN FAMILY AND FRIENDS IN CELEBRATION OF

THE LIFE OF
S
TAVROS
S
TAVROS
M
AVRAKIS
.

S
UNDAY,
T
HE
G
ALA
D
INER
II

T
HE
M
AVRAKIS
F
AMILY

She printed the invitations on glossy paper that she found in a drawer. She cut them to size, arranged them in a stack. She would give them to the hostess, and the hostess would fasten them to the cover of the menus. The memorial would be tomorrow, and the right people would come. She pocketed one for herself. She exited the office, wearing the sweater.

Marina said, jovially, “Don't feel too sorry for the
pappas
. Tonight is the longest we have ever gone without a fight.”

Then her face dropped.

Stavroula turned around, and there was Ruby. She was in the kitchen, where she had not been in years and years. Litza was standing with her, almost holding Ruby up with her arm—Litza, who had come back.

Ruby, her face bruised with worry, said, “Stevie, is he gone?”

Our father had three daughters. The first, as dear as gold. The second, as dear as wood. The third, as dear as salt. The daughter as dear as gold, he addressed from a golden throne. The daughter as dear as wood, he summoned from his wooden throne. The daughter as dear as salt, he looked down on her from his pillar of salt. He sent them each letters that they had to crack open with a spoon, as these letters were made of eggshells and could not be sealed once they had been read. The letters required the daughters' attendance and told them each about themselves.

“But Father, why am I as dear as gold?” the first daughter asked. She wanted to know, because she did not believe him, because Our father was often unable to say what he was actually thinking and instead tried to make his heart feel what his words announced.

“Because, Daughter, you are of great worth to me.” He showed her his many rings and amulets, the golden throne, the cloth that had been woven golden hair by golden hair, the studded crown that proved how far he'd come. “You see how much I like gold.”

She said, “Is that all?”

“You are as dear as gold,” he told his daughter, “because you stay in places deep and dark, as warm as a skull, until the sun transforms you into precious metal.”

The daughter as dear as gold was satisfied.

The second daughter came and had to raise her head high, for Our father's throne was in the canopy of a tree. It was hard to hear him, and the words took their time traveling down the trunk and over the chirping of squirrels and the plunkings of woodpeckers. She waited to hear why she had been summoned and then dismissed and then summoned. She asked Our father why she was as dear to him as wood.

“Better to burn you with,” he said, but this was a joke. What he said after many laughs, which he shared with the woodland creatures, was, “You are as dear as wood, because wood can build a house or make a fire or hang a hat or succumb to paper.”

“Is that all?”

He chose not to tell her other indelible truths about wood. He said, instead, “You can burn wood and turn it into something new.”

“Is that all?”

Our father took his time answering, and by now the second daughter was used to this. She could wait a long time for his answer that might never come, or it might tell her more of the same, which was that to matter, she had to be consumed. What she heard was, “Wood breathes, even after death.”

She left with this power, which was a self-knowing, and a hunger for chopping down trees and milling them into paper.

The third daughter approached her father from a distance and found that she could not tell where the throne of salt began. It was a pillar, yes, but it spread finely over the floor. She felt the grains beneath her bare feet. The slightest disturbance caused an avalanche. Each breath, the salt was burying her feet. Someone eavesdropping sneezed, and the salt sprayed over her ankles.

“I will deliver a riddle,” Our father said to this one, the salt reaching her calves. “What is essential in small quantities but deadly to animals and plants in excess? So harmful it can leave you with muscle cramps, dizziness, death, even electrolyte disturbance?”

“Salt,” the daughter as dear as salt answered. The salt coming now to her knees.

“No,” he corrected, “daughters.” She attempted a step back, but he required that she come forward, as did the salt. It sunk her thighs.

“Salt is money,” the daughter as dear as salt answered. “Salt is blood. Salt is water.” Her voice caused a dramatic avalanche. Her waist disappeared beneath the white mountain. “Salt is work and salt is sweat. Salt is making home and leaving home.” Her chest, her shoulders. “Salt is yesterday and tomorrow. Salt is point-oh-four percent of the body's weight at a concentration equal to that of seawater.” Up to her neck in salt, but at least she and Our father were now eye to eye.

“Is that all?” the father asked, and the salt rose to her chin.

“You cannot escape salt, just as you cannot escape me.”

“Just as you cannot escape me,” he said, and the throne of salt buried the daughter as dear as salt.

The
pappas
himself takes hot chocolate to the three beautiful girls. He carries the mugs one by one, because he is half blind and the eczema worm has eaten his hands. No matter how many prescriptions she sends, he prefers myrrh and eucalyptus. In the booth, the girls are obedient. They accept the mugs because he asks them to. In booths, all children of all ages wait to be told where to go next; even Marina.
Pappas, if you call, I will come to your table, and I will take some chocolate to drink, too.
But, no, the
pappas
is not her father right now. The
pappas
is a consoler, and he is a meanderer, and he is a poet, and he is a priest, and he is a bird tracking the crumbs to the missing Stavros.