Good Greek Girls Don't (16 page)

She's really angry at me. I get it – she feels like I've abandoned her, but were we really ever that close? We met at uni and became good friends pretty quickly, but for the last couple of years we've only spent time together drinking or cleaning up her drug-related messes. We've never shared secrets, real feelings or even a coffee. So now I'm getting angry at her. How dare she lay all this on me? If being happy means selling out then, yeah, I've sold out.

‘I didn't sell out. I grew up, Vouls. And we can still get together. Ever heard of getting together for dinner or a movie or lunch or shopping, or just a coffee? We don't have to be pissed off our heads to get together.'

‘Sure, would you like us to go pick out furniture for when you and Chrissy-boy marry and set up house, too?'

Stupid bitch. I've had just about enough now. I reach for her bag.

‘What the fuck are you doing? Stop going through my bag!'

I'm not going through her bag – I'm dumping everything on my bed. And no matter how hard she fights me, she won't stop me.

I hold up a little ziplock bag filled with tiny crystals. This cannot be good.

‘What the fuck is this, Voula?' I feel like I'm in a bad B-grade eighties movie. This is serious shit.

‘It's just some ice. You should try it. It'll do you the world of good.'

‘Get the fuck out of here, Voula. Take your shit and piss off.' No matter how drunk I got with her, I never, ever went anywhere near any shit like this. Alcohol is one thing, but drugs, no way. I saw too many people totally screw their lives up with this sort of shit when I worked at the legal service. I know where it can end up. ‘You're either going to end up dead or a vegetable if you keep going. I'm so sick of this bullshit from you. I am so sick of holding your hair back while you throw up, picking you up when you can't walk, having to get you home when you come down from the high. You want to screw your life up? Go ahead. I don't want any part of it.'

I can't do it; I can't help her when she doesn't want to help herself. And if I let her, she will drag me down with her. Why is it that I was able to say no to all that crap and she couldn't? We've had the same upbringing, the same pressures, the same everything. Why has she, like so many others, turned to drugs? It's hysterical really, all the kids that Mum talks about being good children are the ones that are so deep in shit that they can't dig their way out with a shovel. I'm just so glad that I am out of that scene now. I know a lot of it has to do with Chris, but I reckon I would have bailed on that whole scene sooner or later. Maybe it wouldn't have been three months ago when I met Chris, but it would have happened eventually.

‘Fine, Des, you be a good little Greek girl, with your good little Greek boy. Don't bother sending me an invite to the wedding – I'd probably throw up over the first course.'

That's it, her final word and she's gone. Thank God.

‘Despina
mou
. You still same girl. You just grow up.' Maybe.

‘Your Chris make you grow up.'

I realise that in some ways she's wrong and in some ways she's right: Chris didn't make me grow up. He has never, in the three months that we've been together, asked me to change anything about myself. But, meeting him did make me realise that although I'd convinced myself that I was happy before, I actually wasn't. It's not that I was unhappy being single – that part was fine. It was about how I spent my time and how I used alcohol to numb my pain. Chris didn't make me stop going to the bars and getting drunk; I stopped because I realised there was just no point to it all. I didn't even think about it. But after I met Chris, the phone calls inviting me to join Voula and the others stopped coming, and when I tried to call them to get together, they couldn't wait to get off the phone.

‘That Voula just jealous because she loser.' How can Yiayia see through people so easily? Even people she has only met a few times? I wish I had her gift.

‘It just seems that some people liked me better when I didn't have anything special in my life, when all I did was party all night. Why can't she just be happy for me because I'm happy?'

Why can't it just be that simple? Why can't people just be happy for each other? Am I naive to expect that from my friends?

‘She have too many drugs in her stupid head to care about anyone.'

How did Yiayia know that? God she's good.

‘Fredericki is happy for you, no?'

Yes, Ricki is happy for me. She's over the moon that things are going so well with Chris and I.

‘And rhat Michael Turk boy happy for you?'

I love the way Yiayia always throws something in about Michael being Turkish when she mentions him. She likes Michael though; she knows he is a good friend.

‘Pity he no have real religion though.'

‘Yiayia, we're not talking about Michael okay, but, yes, he's happy for me.' He's happy that he doesn't have to be my rent-a-date anymore when I get invites to non-family things that say
Desi and Friend
. I roped him into so many of those things that he must be planning the ultimate revenge on me.

‘Despina, the people who love you is happy for you. The people who jealous of you want to make you cry. You no need them. You have your Chris, you have your family and you have your real friends.'

She's right. It's just sad that all I was to Voula was someone to get drunk with and to scrape her off the gutter on a regular basis.

‘I do have my Chris, don't I, Yiayia? He does make me happy.' I feel like I've been floating on air these last three months. I just don't want the bubble to burst. I'm afraid that sooner or later something will happen, something will go wrong and I'll end up just as unhappy as I was before I met Chris.

‘No be scared, Despina
mou
. No be 'fraid to love Chris.'

‘I am a little bit scared, Yiayia. I can't help it.'

‘No worry my love. One day, you no be afraid to say you love Chris and your heart will be so happy. You love him. I see in your eyes how happy he make you. I see him the one to give me more great-grandchildren.'

Okay, we have to stop this conversation right now. ‘Relax, Yiayia, I've only been going out with him for three months! I'm in no rush to get married and have babies.' Although, if we had a boy and he looked like Chris, what a little spunk he would be! What the hell am I thinking? I think my Yiayia is getting to me.

‘He the one. When you bring the boy home?'

I don't think so! No way am I unleashing my family on Chris. Besides, that would be like making an announcement to everyone and I do not do announcements. My mother would be picking out wedding attire if I brought Chris home and Yiayia would start singing all the traditional wedding songs in preparation for it all. No way. I am just taking things one day at a time and keeping my family and Chris very separate. If he met my family he would probably run in the other direction anyway. And I don't think I would blame him in the slightest.

‘Not yet, Yiayia. I'd like him to stay in my life a little bit longer, not meet the wogs from hell and run screaming out of here. And, Yiayia, I'm sorry but I have to go – I have to meet Chris in half an hour.'

We're going to Katerina's place to spend some time with the baby. She finally popped a boy out about two months ago. My little godson Billy is so cute. Okay, so I'm still unofficially his godmother until we have the ceremony but I still have to spend my fair share of time with him; make sure he's used to me before I have to spend the whole hour at the church preparing him for that big dunking in holy water that he's going to cop.

‘Where you go tonight?'

She's just as nosey as my mother; luckily, I'm meeting Chris at his place tonight so Mum won't strain her neck staring at me through the curtains.

‘Just to one of Chris's work drink things. But before that we're going to Katerina's to see the baby.' What's the bet she's going to read something into this as well?

‘You see, he the one for you.'

Why is she laughing at me? If I didn't love her so much I'd be annoyed right now.

He can tease me all he wants, but there was no way I was going to meet Chris's clients with baby chuck all over me.

‘How did you know he was about to bring it up?'

‘Four nephews and nieces, all raised at my place. I can spot a reflux baby a mile away.' Still, my little godson is very cute – even when he has guzzled more than any baby his age should. Katerina swears that he was born with the appetite of an eighteen-year-old. She doesn't care – she's just happy that her family is now complete and she can close the doors on the baby factory.

‘I swear, I thought you were going to handball him like a football when he started gurgling. But that was the only time you gave him up all night.'

Well, the kid has to get used to me before we get to the church and make my status as his godmother official. It's a pretty traumatic experience for kids; they're taken from the safe haven of their mother's arms and handed over to the godparent for the whole ceremony, and right in the middle of it they're stripped in front of a church full of relatives and friends that they have probably never met and dunked into a cauldron of water. Then they get slathered in oil. I don't want my godson squirming out of my arms or crying because he doesn't recognise me.

‘You're just a big softie, Des. First you maxed out your credit card at Toys ‘R' Us, then you read the girls story after story and you fed the baby. You're clucky.'

There is a huge difference between being the cool aunt or godmother and being clucky.

‘Chris, just keep your eye out for a car park, will you?' I hate being the designated driver on a Friday night in the city.

‘I love the way you change the subject when you know I'm right.'

Good – finally found a car park spot and it's only one block away from where we want to be.

‘Sure, hon, you're right – I'm just frothing at the mouth to push something the size of a watermelon out of an opening the size of a lemon. You want to tell me why we're going to this thing again?'

My reproductive desires – or lack thereof – are not an appropriate topic of conversation for walking the city streets.

‘New client. He owns a chain of bars and coffee shops and wants to bring them all in line – create an image, streamline his operations and all that stuff. I haven't done this sort of thing since I was starting out, but I went to school with Angelo.'

‘So he's not a corporate executive type?' Maybe I can hold my own tonight. Chris is just helping out an old mate.

‘Why does the whole corporate tag scare you, babe?'

God it's chilly tonight. Never believe the weather-man. Summer is just around the corner but it feels like there is an arctic freeze happening in the streets of Melbourne tonight.

‘It doesn't scare me. I just don't want to screw things up for you by opening my mouth and saying something stupid.'

‘Desi, you are a beautiful, intelligent woman. I wish you could see that.'

‘And we both know that my mouth runs two minutes faster than my brain.' Especially when there is alcohol involved.

‘That's why you're driving tonight, babe. Relax. You'll be fine.'