Let Me Explain You (39 page)

Marina feels very unwise tonight. Her heart is a king with many heads and tigers, and she cannot trust it. Tomorrow is the conclusion for Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, her friend and business partner. Tomorrow ends the story that Stavros began in nonsense letters to his family. Impossibly, tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and tomorrow morning is the scheduled Memorial of Stavros Stavros Mavrakis. This gathering of the girls tonight, this
koinonia
, it has nothing to do with the father. This is their wish, not his, even if he would wish it, too. This was not in your plans, Stavro, but here they are, anyhow. They make their own way. Tonight the girls have their own kind of memorial, which is in one way more a communion about being sisters than daughters.

Her Stavroula is so brave. All night, she has been answering her father's last final letter. Stavroula has been inviting customers and employees to come tomorrow to pay their respects. She has been taking care of food and seating arrangements. Now Stavroula is making the table into a triangle that points back to her as the head, so that her sisters will know she has the eyes to see them through this difficult period, and whatever difficulty follows. She is as brave as she was when she first entered this country. Marina remembers, Marina was there to bathe her, because Marina spoke Greek; and after she bathed her, she rubbed olive oil on little Stavroula's bare
koulo. Why?
Stavroula asked.
Because oil is the fertilizer that helps you grow
, Marina said. After a breakfast of warm rice pudding, she sweetened a teaspoon of oil with honey and brought it to Stavroula's lips.
Why?
Stavroula asked.
Because you think not in thoughts, but in bubbles of oil. Why?
Stavroula insisted.
Because it is oil that makes your tongue as slippery as it is
, and Marina caught her tongue between her greased fingers.

Marina, knowing it is both a right and a flaw within herself, cannot help but hold disappointment in her heart for her dear Stavroula. Stavroula senses this, and that pains Marina. Who could believe that Stavros Stavros's letter would speak truth? Marina knows now that he is right about Stavroula, that Stavroula desires things no woman is entitled to—a kind of happiness that should disgust Marina, but mostly it saddens her. Stavroula, a horse that refuses to break, even if domesticity would make life easy. After too many years, even Marina, whom no one could break, had finally broken. Not Stavroula. Her daring Stavroula, this much in her she can admire.

Stavroula meets her eye; Marina taps middle finger to thumb three, four times. A kind of quiet clapping that says, I love you. I see you. Stavroula smiles, turns back to her sisters.

Now the
pappas
is telling a joke. It is either about the goat girl, the snake tree, or he is trying to have them guess at what is the quickest thing on earth. Somehow, the joke becomes a joke about their father. It is Ruby who laughs the easiest. Stavroula, like Marina, laughs with her mouth open. Litza laughs only when Marina catches her not laughing. Of them all, Marina knows, she is the one feeling the hole of her father's absence—because it is a larger version of the hole she feels at all times.

Litza sits across from the
pappas
and the sisters, alone. If Marina were asked to join them, she would sit on Litza's side.

Yes, Marina loves Stavroula, but today maybe even more Litza, because Litza so much needs love. Is broken over it. And Marina, in her own way, can give it from afar though she knows that will never be enough for Litza. As well as, Marina sees some of herself in Litza. They two are the kind of rock that continues to appear in your yard after you sweep it away, more weed than mineral. The kind of rock that has always been in Marina's throat, and, yes, Litza's throat as well, because they both insisted on relying on themselves at such an early age. Marina knows Litza's pain; Marina knows Litza must rise above the pain, as Stavroula has learned to do. Must chew on the rock. Women like them chew on rocks all their entire lives. Which is why Marina cannot offer Litza leniency, but she can offer love, from afar.

The
pappas
says something that Marina, wrapping pastry at the counter, cannot hear. All three girls blow diligently into their cups. Marina knows this trick: it is the sailboat. Whoever blows the sailboat fastest—the
pappas
says to all the children in the village—wins the race. Marina knows there is no sailboat.
That does not stop us, Pappas. That makes us try harder
.

The mother will come soon, and then Marina can call the
pappas
back from the family. Marina can say,
Come away, let them think in peace with their confusion
, once Carol arrives. Until then, Marina takes care of the bakery case. Marina uses plastic wrapping for the pastries and does not get too involved in the condolensing that is happening at the table.

Marina does not know if Stavros Stavros will die or will he live. Marina is not someone who can see into the future. Marina trusts that what must happen will happen, just like the hen under the knife bends her neck to what's to come.

So Marina tells herself. But Marina does not trust Stavros Stavros or his brain, thick as cow tongue these days, or his disappearance.

Stavros Stavros is the kind of man who will arrange his own funeral and not die, but he is also the kind of man to arrange his funeral and then go ahead and die.

What will happen to the three beautiful girls? Ruby, who does not yet know how to read the world, and maybe never will, or could it be that she is fortunate enough that the world will more properly read her? Stavroula and Litza, think how far apart they already are, one an ocean liner, one a satellite. Marina loves them both, dearly, as if she thought up the idea of them. Marina understands that Stavroula and Litza—and you, too, Stavro, and you, too, Dina, and you, too, Marina, and you, too—belong to a race of people who must carry everything they own in their mouths. All of their luggage, they squeeze into their mouth. You can only fit so much of the old place, Marina, or so many words, or so many exaggerations, or so many stories, or so many people, or so much soup before you must spit and take a breath; and then a very different world fills you up. It is not unwelcome, it is just reinvention. This is immigration, even so many years later.

Marina wraps the pastry with three easy folds. Plastic on plastic on plastic, so that it is no longer clear, it is cloudy. The
pappas
calls for a round of milk shakes, the girls not quite through with their hot chocolates. Every flavor, he says to the waitress. It is a reason for everyone in the diner, even her, to love him.

The beautiful girls do not understand their father. They don't know what a stubborn man he can be; for years, stubborn enough to resist all the forces ripping his family apart and then stubborn enough to rip it apart himself. Marina watched without giving advice or getting involved. She told herself that he would have cracked her advice against the side of a rock. Marina, without children, without family, without any troubles besides the ones that get stirred up in pots. What does she know?

That is not true, Marina, and you know it.

All those years, Marina's greatest sin, talking too much and saying nothing. Yes, Marina, you had your say for how to fillet the flounder, and you had your say in keeping vultures out of your kitchen, but what did that matter? What life did that change? Your
pappas
, who has never met these children before, is offering the easiest word of all—silence. He kisses them all on the forehead, his face grazing theirs like a sheep's. Marina's heart breaks, and also she feels relief when the beautiful girls seem consoled. What she has failed to do for so long, the
pappas
has done in minutes.

Now, Marina is brave enough to say what she could not say for years. A prayer in the diner is as good as a prayer anywhere:

Father, take care of the girls.

The milk shakes come. The
pappas
fashions farm animals out of the straw wrappers and makes them walk.

When he begins to sing, too low for many people to hear, Marina cannot go on with her prayer. She cannot go on with her work. She watches and listens. The song tells about an apricot tree and a shepherd who falls asleep only to wake up and realize that his flock never left him, they are just on the other side of the mountain with the girl from his dreams. It is when he sings the refrain, “The girl of his dreams,” that the
pappas
looks up at Marina, his eyes glossy. It is when he sings “I could see you for the apricot trees,” that he beckons her.

Marina is the little girl holding her milk jug. Nothing lost but the bottom. And instead of scolding her for the spilled milk, he laughs; she makes him laugh.

From behind the counter, Marina joins her
pappas
beneath the apricot tree.

Dear Dad.

Are you in hell?

Are you in heaven?

Are you in hell?

Hell was one clean plate, one fork in the drain board, two mugs on the counter. Hell was three in the morning, Dina at the stove in a green robe, supervising a kettle. She was digging the crescent of her thumbnail into an eyetooth, sleepy but not irritated. If she had seen Litza from her window the day that Litza followed her father here, she said nothing about it.

Dina did not complain about Litza's banging on the shuddery glass window, and she had not been nasty about being pulled from the couch, though it would have been better if she had. Instead, she said, “I knew you'd come. A mother senses when her girls have unfinished business.” She was forever saying shit like this anytime Litza gave her the chance—things that exonerated her by insinuating that she could mother from a distance, that she could be forgiven, when a) she was not exonerated; b) she was not mothering; c) this was not distance enough; d) even now, Dina mistakenly believed in redemption.

She did not ask if Litza wanted cream or sugar—either because she didn't think to, or because she remembered that Litza took it plain. She said, “You were never this quiet.”

“I'm changing.”

“That's good. I hear you're fixing your mistakes lately. Living better, living like me.”

“I'm not here to talk about my mistakes.”

Dina crossed her heart. “Good idea, we won't talk about your mistakes, and for a change, we won't talk about mine. Let's promise.”

Litza pulled at the string of the tea bag. She was going little by little, the way you did with a stranger you didn't like but suspected might be helpful. She gave this much—we've been searching. She gave nothing more because—what good was Dina to her? She was sure that before she knocked, Dina was sitting with one thumb over the other, staring from one flowerless vase to another, waiting for her opportunity to die. The only thing delivering her from that, for a few minutes at least, was Litza.

“Your father is crying in some woman's lap.”

“Whose?”

“Anybody's, that's how your father is. He will cry to anyone with a tissue and tits.”

Litza nodded, though that was something he and Dina had in common.

Dina reached behind her to a messy shelf and pulled a book.
To Live Until We Say Good-bye
, fucking again, fucking everywhere. The cover, gray and cracked. Dina put it on the table. Litza turned Elisabeth Kübler-Ross over; she was tired of looking at this old book and its unnaturally sympathetic author.

“He gave you a copy?”

“Of course. He wants everyone to grieve his way.”

Litza had been doing grieving of her own, thank you, grieving that completely obliterated her father's. Did he really believe she could be contained in just five stages? Did he think her sorrow was simple, a linear reflex of denial and acceptance? Her mourning was supposed to be explained entirely by his death? How about she mourn all those years he was alive and dead to her? No, fuck you, she had been grieving so long, her grief had become immortal. Her grief was porous and residual, as one J. William Worden understood. The healing, Dr. J. William Worden explained in his book, which she had found in the library where she could be anonymous and unbothered, begins only when things look like they've gone back to normal. It's at that point that you TEAR, and the four tasks of mourning begin. Litza did not read Dr. Worden's advice as
tear
, to cry: she read it
tear
, to be torn in half.
T
meant she had
To accept the reality of the loss. E
meant she had to
Experience the pain of the loss.
Then there was
Adjust
, forever
Adjust to the new environment post-loss
, and finally
R
,
Reinvest in the new reality
. It was the
R
. That tricky
R
. She couldn't do it, she could not root herself to a new world knowing it might be wrenched away any day.

Dina said, “I have something better.”

Litza didn't react, so Dina went off to a dark spot down the hallway, what could only have been the bedroom in this shitty apartment no better than Litza's. Litza imagined it was made of leaves, a warren with the bones of baby rabbits in piles beneath the bed, which Dina munched on. Litza rubbed her own belly. She whispered, “If you're in there, I want you to know that I will never eat bones the same size as you.”

Dina came out with an e-reader. She had loaded
Taming Your Outer Child: A Revolutionary Program to Overcome Self-Defeating Patterns.

Fuck her.

Even if she was right, fuck her.

“This is a great resource,” Dina said. She offered it like a pamphlet. “Relax, read a page. You can stretch out on the couch. Read a chapter.”

Living with Dina during her teenage years was worse than life with her parents. She hated admitting it, but everyone knew. Dina had never wanted her for a daughter, had wanted instead a playmate. If her father died tomorrow, this is what she would be left with. The same motherly nothing.