Let Me Explain You (43 page)

You tell your children what to do with their lives, do you know what they say back to you? By your laughter, I can tell that you know the answer: Get your own life, Dad.

So I did that, exactly. I say to myself and to my goat, my real goat, Am I the type of man to wait around for the Goat of Death? No, I am not. I am a man of two lives—one in Greece, one in America—and who says I cannot be a man of three?

I decide to go meet this Third Life, or meet Death in the process and bargain. I walk. I walk only. I feel that Death, if it wants, can catch up to you quickly. If you are on a train or you drive cross-country, Death has many obvious ways of running you off the road. I would make Death slow down. I would make Death walk with me on my journey. Then he would understand Stavros Stavros Mavrakis and offer forgiveness.

Do you know the elusive
kri-kri
of Crete? He is a goat that is never seen, never, even if he is nearby. His own shepherd cannot find him. Death, he is like that.

Together, Death and I walk through America. One diner to the next, eating meals with strangers—for free, some of them. Some things we see, I can share with you, and some places I keep only between me and my Death. We take the road through cornfield and over mountain. Even desert. There is desert in America? I think I will see a world of mud, that this is what Death will show me, but over and over I am shown fields and sun. Enough to feed us forever in America if we let it.

A funny thing happen then. This man who is traveling with Death meets a lady on his travels. She is in a field carrying very large sunflowers and a bucket of water. She does not slow, so I follow her. We talk on opposite sides of a wooden fence, where she cannot see Death at all, and she says to Stavros, “You take your dreams too seriously.” I answer to this pretty lady, which she is from Eastern Europe and speaks not even so good English as Stavros, “I am an immigrant. Of course I have always taken my dreams seriously.” She answers, “Maybe it is time to stop being an immigrant.”

I think to myself, I will like to see this pretty Eastern Europe lady again, who is so impressed by Stavros and has agreed to friend him on Facebook.

I leave the field and begin my journey with Death again. I miss the pretty lady's watery voice. Death is a quiet companion, with no answers, so Stavros the man thinks on life. He thinks and thinks of the last ten days, including today, and tells Death:

I will face you here, Death. Death, you will answer. Because I am not finish with my life.

Death listens without speaking. Stavros waits, but Death will not respond. Stavros waits some more. Stavros demands, thinking about the pretty lady in the field, I still want more. Will you give me more life? Or will you take it from me here and now?

Death will not take Stavros here and now.

Death's answer is to bring Stavros Stavros home.

Death's answer is Marina, on the tile floor.

So today, in honor of the greatest cook that not even Death could spare, I ask that you eat, eat with me, with my family, for Marina who loved my children, for the
pappas
who has lost his only daughter.

We raise bread for Marina, who raised us all and filled our plates and gave us more.

In honor of you, Marina
mou
, I raise bread: I say something that Stavros Stavros Mavrakis learned on his long walk with Death. Something Stavros Stavros has never before been able to say.

I am a grateful man.

I thank you, I thank you for listening.

The Letter that Stavros Stavros Meant to Send. The Letter Stavros Stavros Wanted for Litza. The Letter Litza Wanted, herself. The Letter Stavroula knew could be hidden inside the Mouse Hole of her father's heart. The Letter that said, If I could replace me for another me, For You, I Would. The Letter that said: Dear Daughter, Our Letters are like bandages, always trying to mark the wound.

The Letter That Could Not Be Written Because It Was True. The Letter He Did Send, with No Way to Open.

Dear, Family.

Dear my cherish ones,

Let Me Explain You Something:

A man may hold a child, like if she were a fish.

Did this man want fish? No, he wanted sons.

But in his palms are three fish, given by God. One is beautiful, one has gills so small it is a miracle that she survives, and one is so fierce she is like a dark star exploding.

The man is up to his knees. He is in a current that remembers every time it goes out and forgets each time it comes in.

He keeps his beautiful fish in his pocket as long as he can. The beautiful fish is a delight to anyone who holds her. But a pocket is no place for a beautiful fish, or else a beautiful fish becomes nothing more than a beautiful shell. The father, he gives little by little until finally the little fish is swimming on her own.

To the next fish, the miracle fish, he tells her, Your gills are so small, how can you hope to live just the way you are? The miracle fish splashes over the lifelines of his palm. She is a stubborn fish, so she says to him: “I only need to hold one breath at a time.” Yes, the man says to himself, this is wisdom. Like so, she could swim forever in the fearsome ocean, the Atlantic.

OK, so the man addresses to his other fish, in his other palm; this one, she is more like a sea urchin, with black spikes for skin and a pink mouth she keeps hidden. If a diver steps on this type of fish, he will feel a spike through his heel. So the man tells her, his little black fish-child, This is a way to hurt others, this way to be. In return, black fish-child says to him: “This is a way not to get eaten.” She is right, too, in her own way. She swims in the ocean of fearsome in a different way.

The miracle fish, the dark black urchin, and the littlest beautiful one. What choice does the father have but to give his children water? This is how they must live.

The man is up to his knees. He is in a current that remembers every time it goes out and forgets each time it comes in. His palms are empty. His children, gone to the same sea.

Over a lifetime, a man becomes a whale, very large.

He wants only this.

When he dies, his body sinks to the floor for his children, his fish, to feed.

While I've drawn inspiration from family and friends for
Let Me Explain You
and some resemblances may emerge, this work is a novel and not a memoir. The character eccentricities and personal conflicts portrayed within are fictional and in service of the central narrative. I realize that this comes as a shock, but we may be the only Greek family in America not to own a diner. And among many other things, I don't have a father who makes prophecies about his own mortality, no one in my family participates in petty vandalism, and there is no Goat of Death. What the Mavrakis family and my family have in common is that they are all warriors, and I love them for it.

Thank you, Sara Nordstrom, my partner and my best friend, for believing in me. This book is for you: every book will be for you. I know I can't build you a house, but at least I can try to make us a home out of words.

Who's gonna stop us now?

Thanks to my family. I want to applaud my mom, Michele Liontas, and my sisters—Damara Burke, Angie Liontas, and Alexis Liontas. You are models of resiliency and strength—and you have each, in your own way, inspired this novel. While
Let Me Explain You
is of course a work of fiction, I hope that something in these pages speaks to you. In many ways this story was written as much for you as it was for me.

Thank you, Judy Baker, aunt and PR extraordinaire, for reminding me always that I am a writer. Thank you, Marissa Baker, for teaching me how to write a child's resilience.

Thanks to my editor, Kara Watson, for helping to shape this book into the best expression of itself. My appreciation extends to Kate Lloyd and the entire team at Scribner. Thanks to my agent, David McCormick, and to Bridget McCarthy: truly, I could not ask for better readers.

Thanks to Syracuse University and the National Writing Project @ Rutgers for the space and time to write. Thanks to Maggie Devine for her encouragement.

My greatest appreciation to: my
mentoh
Arthur Flowers, who taught me the novel and demanded to know whose story this was; George Saunders, who explained me what it means to write joy as well as pain; Christine Schutt, for her honesty; Dana Spiotta, for showing me myself; Ellen Litman, for her guidance. I am especially grateful to my compatriots, fighting their own fight to say it better. Joyfully, there are too damn many of you even to name. Thank you to my workshop—Oscar Cuevas, Danny Magariel, Jessie Roy, and especially Caitlin Hayes and Alex Barnett. Your killer insight gave this book a second life. Thank you to my friends and brilliant readers, Christi Cartwright and Cate McLaughlin. Your love and support are humbling.

Thanks to Katherine Kourti, my Greek teacher, proofreader, and wonderful maker of
gigantes
.

I want to thank the people who helped make Marina who she is: Marion Hodum, my very first mentor at Mt. Ephraim Public Schools, as well as Audubon High School's John Skrabonja, Sue McKenna, and Mme Susan Parker. I can finally acknowledge your generosity by dreaming up a character as beloved as you are.

Deep and belated gratitude to Siobhan Gibbons, Rutgers University. If only the bottom is broken, Siobhan, not all is lost. Thank you for your obstinate, loving hope for me.

And eternal thanks to the reader who gets what it means to be foreign.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Annie Liontas

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First Scribner hardcover edition July 2015

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ISBN 978-1-4767-8908-8

ISBN 978-1-4767-8910-1 (ebook)