Nicolai's Daughters (6 page)

Her father was wrong. He'd told her that Greece had never caught up to the rest of the world and she was lucky he immigrated to Canada when he did. She could do anything she wanted. He was right about the family, though. They were loud and opinionated. Her father was like them. At a party or a crowded restaurant, Alexia heard his voice above the others. He had feelings, as he used to call it, about everything.

Katarina put her arm around Alexia's shoulder. She leaned away.

“This is our new freeway,” Christina said, when Alexia poked her head forward.

“It's at least six years old,” Solon said. “She exaggerates.”

“Alexia, you lucky you don't have husband.”

The others laughed and Alexia sat back. Katarina patted her on the shoulder. Alexia nodded and came up with a weak smile in return. A husband? For her? She'd never given marriage much thought. She'd dated briefly in university, but didn't like taking time away from her studies and thought most of the guys she'd met were immature and only interested in getting drunk on weekends. One guy who wasn't like that did come along. He was a political science major interested in a career in politics. They saw each other over several months. She felt comfortable with him, enjoyed their discussions, loved the fact that he was a runner like her. They were having dinner at a pizza joint they went to every Friday night when he called her aloof and distant. “I feel like you're always stage acting. I don't think you're really here with me when we're together.”

“It just takes me time,” she said, “to get close to people.”

“It's been months,” he said. “I thought we could have something permanent here if you gave it a shot.”

“What's permanent?” she asked. “Not sure there's any such thing.”

He started seeing others and stopped calling. She made no effort to pursue him. Let him have his way. She didn't care.

After that, she had a fling with her ethics professor, a man twice her age. He was mature and smart and absent-minded. He liked it when she kept him organized. She got too busy with work after she finished university and eventually moved back to Vancouver. Her longest relationship lasted four years. Joel was older, married and a partner in the firm she worked for right after graduation. It was her affair with Joel that made her realize she liked relationships where the man went home at the end of the night.

“You make this easy,” Joel had said to her once as she lay beside him, her head on his chest, his curly black hair tickling her nose. She moved her head slightly, rubbed her nose and still his chest hairs itched. She slid away and grabbed her housecoat. “I beg to differ. It's you and your wife who make it easy on me.”

He didn't understand and she didn't explain, but what she meant was that she didn't have to be or do anything. She didn't need to take care of things, look after him. His wife took care of his everyday demands, leaving Alexia the best part of him, the no-hassle part. This perfect situation didn't last. She changed firms and the relationship fizzled. She focused on work. It was the one thing she could count on. Whatever she put into it, she got much more out of it. Clients raved about her work, told their friends about her, and the firm continued to promote her until she became a partner. That gave her control and security. She couldn't say the same thing about her relationships.

Besides, no one was interested in the real her. They only saw the image she'd created for herself: independent, driven, focused, a workaholic. And she wasn't in the market anyway. Her father told her she worked too hard, never raised her eyes from her laptop long enough to notice a man. “No time for that,” she'd said to him.

“We're going to stop for lunch at a beach near Loutraki. You hungry, no?”

“A little,” Alexia said. “Not really. More tired than anything.”

Christina's jaw twitched. Alexia realized she'd disappointed her. These people were trying to engage her, she thought, make her feel like she belonged, and she'd been holding herself back as though she was better than them. They hadn't done anything wrong. She told herself she would try harder, be warmer. Or at least as warm and friendly as she could be. She smiled at Katarina.

Solon rolled down his window and Alexia thought an oven door had opened in her face. Her hair blew across her eyes. The breeze drowned out the conversations in the seats behind her, but she heard Christina and Solon squabble. The others quieted down and didn't interfere.

“
Yati, paidi mou?”
Christina shouted. One hand was on the steering wheel, the other pointed at Solon as if to scold. “We have the air conditioning!” She slapped his arm.

“My neck is sick with the artificial air,” Solon replied. He pointed to his neck. His index finger, stained yellow, his hand rough, calloused.

“Thank God you, Alexia, are like your father,” she said, and turned briefly to look at her. “Too pretty to settle for one man. Your
thia
have no choice. I had to take Solon.”

“Watch what you're doing,” Solon said.

Christina had a good sense of humour. Nicolai did too. His voice was always raised and he had a smile behind his hazel eyes just like Christina did now. He liked to get close to people when he talked. His clients saw beyond his boyish grins, his jokes. Every new project became the most rewarding challenge of his career and yet when he decided to retire at sixty-four and sell his business, he walked away from it and told Alexia he wouldn't miss it. “I've worked hard for long enough.” His face had grown thinner and his grey whiskers made him look pale. Still, she didn't think to ask him if there was anything wrong. She should have noticed he was sick, confronted him.

“Besides, I can spend time with you,
paidi mou,
and my friends.”

He had friends, she had business associates.

The breeze tugged at Alexia's shirt. She held her hair back to keep it off her face. More trucks passed. Christina kept one hand on the steering wheel and tuned the radio with the other. A song she recognized came on and she sang along with the melancholy singer, matching his drones. Solon held his hands over his ears and muttered to himself. Releasing her hold on her hair, Alexia raked her fingers through it. Under her fingernails, a sandy residue remained.

They arrived in Loutraki an hour or so later and Christina shifted into a lower gear, revved the engine as if she was about to take a run at something and drove up over a steep curb and onto the beach. Like nails against a chalkboard, the undercarriage grated until the van bottomed out with a loud bang. Alexia jumped, but everyone else clapped and congratulated Christina. Alexia saw the sign in Greek and below it, in English.
No Parking on Beach
. She pointed it out and Maria responded, “They make the rules so we break them. This is how we do everything.”

“We make our own right,” Yannis in the back seat said. “Like Socrates and Aristotle.”

What a know-it-all twerp, Alexia thought. He'll learn soon enough.

“University teaches them strange things these days.” Christina said. The aunts and uncles agreed and that was the end of it.

Nicolai had been as fond of breaking the rules as she was of sticking to them. She paid parking tickets as soon as she got them, but he never bothered. “They don't really expect us to pay those crooks,” he used to say after he received the umpteenth letter from a collection agency. She was different from him in all the most important ways. She never accepted social invitations from clients or colleagues. “There could be a conflict of interest,” she'd said. “Why would I put myself in that situation?” He allowed his suppliers to wine and dine him. “We're friends. Where's the conflict?” He liked carefree young women and was never faithful to any of them. She liked older married men, but never more than one at a time.

“It's March,
paidi mou.
Water too cold,” Christina said when Solon suggested they all go in for a swim. She shrugged her jacket off her shoulders and left it in the van, then slipped out of her shoes and into heavy, old-fashioned sandals.

Solon put his hands together in prayer and looked up at the sky. “At least she makes one concession. She took off her winter jacket. Incredible.” He pointed his entwined fingers even higher. “I have to thank God that he took away a little of her stubbornness today. This no happen often.”

Alexia left her bag on the floor and tried to leave her purse in the van beside it, but Christina shook her head and gave Alexia that look again so she slung the purse over her shoulder and picked up one of the smaller boxes.

“This is man's work,” Solon said and took the box.

Alexia followed along behind them. Even though they were parked on the beach and could have easily had their picnic close to the van, they were in search, Christina said, “of the perfect spot for your come-back-home lunch.” Sand filled Alexia's sneakers and rubbed between her toes. She slowed down, got further behind and yet she could still hear the family's chatter. The Gulf of Corinth gurgled quietly onto the shore. Even here, far outside Athens, the smog coloured the air sulphur yellow.

Alexia turned on her cell phone to retrieve her messages. Christina heard the phone's chime. She turned.

“Tired, no?”

“Work never stops,” Alexia replied.

“Fresh air and good food will fix,” she said. “You will sleep tonight.”

Alexia checked the cell phone. Three messages. “I need to return some calls.”

“First eat,” Christina said. “Calls wait. No?”

“Well, yes, it could.” She turned off the phone and dropped it in her purse.

The women layered the shore with multicoloured blankets arranged in a circle. Around the edges, they poked holes in the sand and erected umbrellas that advertised
Mythos
beer and
Metaxas,
the brandy Nicolai used to drink. Casseroles of vine leaves,
moussaka,
and ribs were taken out of the baskets, boxes and coolers, along with several bowls of Greek salad and Tupperware containers of feta cheese, olives and various dips. Five loaves of bread were lifted out of plastic bags and placed in the middle of each blanket on a cardboard cutting board made from the flaps of the boxes that held their supplies.

“
Moussaka
by Katarina,” Christina said. Katarina stood up and curtsied. Part of Katarina's three-quarter-length skirt had lodged itself in her buttocks. She picked at the lost material with one hand, waved with the other and said she hoped everyone would enjoy her dish. “
Kalos Orisate
!” She turned and before she plopped down she smiled at Alexia, who looked away.

“
Kalos Sas Vricame
,” the others replied.

Each matriarch presented her signature dish while her family and the rest of the clan looked on and clapped. Alexia ripped at the loaf of bread closest to her. When she realized what she was doing, she glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. Christina handed Alexia a plate and told her to start because she was the guest. Alexia took just a spoonful of everything in front of her.

“No wonder she skinny,” someone said. They all laughed.

“No is natural,” Christina said.

“Being thin is not a crime,” Maria said.

“Having a little meat is good. Think of people who starve in this world. We have to be grateful we have so much.”

Katarina agreed.

“Not for me,” Maria said.

“You different,” another aunt said.

“Who wants to be same?” Maria said.

“That is what I am trying to say,” Yannis interjected.

“See the ideas you put in the head of children?”

“I am almost a man.”

“You go to university,” Christina said. “This does not make you a man.”

Plates and forks clanged. The others spoke over each other.

“Ideas are not bad,” Maria said.

Alexia had had many of the same discussions with her father, whenever she watched what she ate, bought organic food, drank soy milk rather than cow's milk or switched to gluten-free breads.

“Food is food. It's all good for you. You've just bought into the ads,” he'd say.

“I feel better when I'm careful,” Alexia responded.

“
Ella, paidi mou
,” he said. “You don't believe everything you read.”

“You mean you ad guys lie to make a buck.”

“Families are this way,” Maria said, the food in her mouth muffling her voice.

“We take good with bad,” Christina said and avoided Maria's eyes.

“Not all families wild like yours, Maria,” Katarina said.

“At least we are alive,” Maria said. “Have a pulse.”

Everyone began to talk at once. Alexia remembered how she used to get excited and talk with her mouth full. As she'd gotten older, she'd hated the way her father talked with his mouth full, bits of food spewing out with the words. It was raw and undignified. I'd never let anyone see that much of me, she thought. As she sat watching these people, her father's family, she remembered how, when she got older, it became her turn to chide her father for talking with his mouth full.

One night, he'd been helping her with her homework, as he did whether she wanted him to or not. “Your paper doesn't support its conclusion,” Nicolai said. Alexia was in high school, she knew full well what she was doing. She didn't need his help. He shrugged and smiled out of one side of his mouth as if he'd won a point. A bit of spinach from their dinner of
spanikopita
was stuck in his teeth.

“I can't understand what you're saying,” Alexia said. She hoped to finish dinner before they got into it. She really wanted this to be the time he didn't tell her what he thought. Just let the paper be, or better yet, tell me how great it is and leave it at that.

“I'm sick and tired of the problems with the natives you write about in your paper,
paidi mou
. When do they take responsibility? Why is it always someone else's fault? And why do the rest of us have to take care of these people?”