Let Me Explain You (10 page)

There was a space between the desk and a cabinet, and she felt there. She found a brown leather portfolio. In it was a brochure for funeral caskets. She also found a torn sheet of paper that told her,

The depression is on me like a wolf tooth.

The wolf may take you by the throat,

but it is not the wolf that take you whole.

God is on the snout for Stavros Stavros Mavrakis.

And then, folded and taped, his Last Will and Testament. Today's date.

I, Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, being age of majority, being of sound mind and memory, not acting under duress, under influence, fraud or menace, declare this
. He revoked his prior will, and he revoked his prior marriage with the typed line, “I am not currently married.” He revoked his children, too. The section called Gifts was blank, as was Residuary Estate, as was Executor and Executor Powers. No indication of where his money and possessions and remains and estate would go. It was a blank will, or it was the wrong one altogether because the real one was elsewhere, or it was his doubt that he was really going to die, or it was telling her something that Litza couldn't quite figure out. Or he was just going to rewrite it after his nap.

The photograph slipped out of a side pocket in the portfolio. It curled at the edges. She did not recognize this picture, and it took some minutes for her to realize that she did know the little girls in the photo. Her, her sister. Ages four and six, a close-up. They were swathed in pitchy white dresses, which, like the rest of the photograph, had faded to the color of concrete. Their hair was pulled into pigtails. Litza traced the red ribbons at the collars and wondered who had had the imagination to tie them on. The girls' faces were as round and fresh as hard apricots, except there was sleeplessness in Stavroula's eyes. A child has dark circles under her eyes? Stavroula, her smile a little cocky even then, face and shoulders imperceptibly ahead of Litza's, which should have served as a warning to Litza that she'd better sit up. But Stavroula's hand, on the back of Litza's neck: it said, Here we go, together. Here we are, and you can take us both or you can leave us both. The cocky smile, maybe, but still the hand on Litza's neck saying, No matter who comes: it's us together.

“Looking for something?”

Litza's heart kicked like a hoof. Her sister, finally.

When Litza was eight, ten-year-old Stavroula was standing just like thirty-one-year-old Stavroula was now. At the door, simultaneously wanting to know and not know what Litza was doing in their parents' room, the nervousness in her close to curdling the fun because Stavroula was always obsessed about getting caught at things she was barely doing. The tone accusatory, but also curious, wondering. And what did Litza show her then? A wooden man made of clothespins, which her father, as a little boy, had first bound together with laces from his own father's work boots until his father surprised him with a smear of glue, kept warm in his pocket between two sheets of wax paper. And what did Stavroula say when she saw the wooden man?
Are you going to break it?
And what did Litza do? Break it. And then what did Stavroula do? Tell. She went running with her mouth open for telling. And then what did Litza do? What did Litza do? When she heard Stavroula running with her mouth open to Mother? Break it even more, that's what she did, so that the wood became pricks and sawdust. And then what did their father do? Punish her. But in the privacy of his room, he moaned a little, she saw him when she was supposed to be sitting on the bottom step of the attic, grounded, she saw the way that mourning and sadness and an inability to gather the shards of days you can't remember, still feel close to, could turn his cheek into something that bobbed and gulped, like a frog dipping up and down in his home pond. And what did Litza do? She glued the man back together. And what else did she do? She buried the man in the backyard. And what did Stavroula do? She made their father a new man from clothespins and said that it was from both of them. But it took years—not until the wedding, really—before Stavroula would conspire with Litza again.

This was a moment when one could have asked the other how she was, but Litza didn't do it because Stavroula didn't.
Dear Stavroula: I'm fine, how are you?
Stavroula, the control freak, everything on her terms.

Litza slipped the photograph beneath sheets of paper on her lap. “You lost weight.”

Last time Litza saw her, Stavroula's hair was long and stringy, and she was fat, and she accused Litza of doing something she did not do. OK, she took a stool to her father's bakery case, but did that mean she was automatically at fault for her sister's car window? Weren't there thousands of other people capable of petty vandalism? Why did Stavroula have to leap to blame her? Yes, the younger, dumpy version of Stavroula loved to deliver judgment on Litza. Was this the same Stavroula now? She wasn't sure. Her face, which drew to a point at the chin, seemed not so serious the way Litza remembered it. Stavroula had changed how she dressed, or how her clothes fit, so that her pink sleeveless shirt and jeans made her seem a year younger, not older. She was wearing earrings, though not the ones Litza had made her—generic, lifeless hoops, from a mall, no doubt. Stavroula's hair was short, shaved in the back and lightly curled on top. The way Stavroula looked said she looked this good because she hadn't had to bother with her sister in many months. Stavroula was like a divorcée who had realized, finally, that she was better off. Litza was the one who aged in the last year. Sure that Stavroula was sizing her up, too, Litza hoped that Stavroula did not catch this, and then she hoped that she did and felt responsible. Wait, Stavroula was wearing eyeliner? She knew how to do that?

“And you look like you're up to no good,” Stavroula answered.

“I'm looking for his will.”

“What do you need to see his will for?”

Stavroula, the goody-goody. She suspected Litza was looking for money. On top of all this, in her hand was a brown bag full of medicine for Marina. That was why Stavroula was here on her day off. Litza knew this from when they used to be friends, sort of, around the time of the wedding, and got lunch in the city. Had she come at this time on purpose, hoping she'd run into her sister?

Litza said, “He's changing it.”

This had an effect, though Stavroula was hesitant, suspicious, weary, all the things she had been in the final days before they stopped talking. “You've seen it?”

Litza nodded.

She thought that Stavroula might sit in the metal chair. She did not. Litza thought about switching to the metal chair so Stavroula could take the office chair, but then it would look like this was Stavroula's idea, and Litza didn't know how to say, Don't worry, I'll say it's me, which it is, which it always is, even if it's you, too. She wanted to give the impression of ease, that she would confront their father for the both of them if he came down suddenly.

Dear Stavroula: Everybody deserves a second chance.

Stavroula closed the door.

Litza rolled the photo into her jacket pocket so Stavroula couldn't see it, then brought the papers to the desk. Litza pointed out the missing information in items one through four and explained how this new Last Will and Testament revoked his old Last Will and Testament. She could feel her sister softening. A cricket chirped in Litza's chest, too noisy with pride and fear at having something her sister, who wanted nothing to do with her, might now want.

She could let this dangle, if she wanted to. She could make Stavroula fucking beg for a second chance, see how she liked it.

She could feel Stavroula leaning in, learning, and it reminded her of the last time they were this close—Stavroula lifting the long train of her wedding gown as they circled the altar three times for holy, holy, holy matrimony. And Litza, encircled by her husband and her sister—in that moment, they were the two people who could understand her in a world of people who couldn't, and then the priest stopped his chanting and the spell broke and she remembered that no one, actually, understood her. But right now, as Stavroula's brow furled, Litza felt again that they were joined.

“We have to come back,” Litza said, “as soon as he finishes it.” Her breath was caught in her throat.

A little tuft of air escaped Stavroula's lips. Her eyes, stupidly wide, the way they had been on the wooden man, thinking that Litza was going to break it when she had no intention of doing that, only wanted to cup him in her hand to see how much space his full body would take. Only wanted to touch it, to hold something her father cared about.

But, right now, Stavroula wasn't running to tell. Stavroula folded the sheets, placed them back inside the portfolio. Litza put the portfolio back into its spot. Their eyes met solidly.

Stavroula said, “What the hell is he doing?”

Pause. “What, you want me to smell my fingers and tell you?”

Stavroula let out a loud laugh. Then Litza laughed. They were quiet for a second, and it began all over again. One stopping, then the other getting her going. Laughing with their mouths full as if they had stuffed them once more with those after-dinner mints, stuck them to their little-girl teeth, the mints dissolving into a fluoride-tasting paste. The laughter was like that—the kind of fit that children fall into and can't get out of—and it only got worse when it gave Stavroula the hiccups. It hurt so much, Litza felt tears.
Dear Stavroula: Smell my fingers!
A Greek idiom, a favorite of their father's that was supposed to mean: Am I a mind reader?

A beat, a door opening and closing, something in her telling her this had to end now. And their father was entering the office. “What is this?” he said, looking from one to the other. “What are you doing?” His hair was crushed from where he must have been lying on it, his eyes a little crushed, too, from sleep. He didn't sound angry. That stunned them both to silence, then back to laughter. He laughed because they laughed. This had them laughing more.

He realized the laughing was not with him, but still hopeful, said, “Are you here to visit with me for the final wishes?”

Litza's eyes shot to Stavroula. She felt herself pleading for Stavroula not to tell. Her sister's mouth, turning like a knob. Her own mouth preparing to say, Be on my side for once.

Litza's mind raced through a catalog of items her hands had picked over. She spun the chair and grabbed at the pile to the right of the desk. She picked up two copies of
To Live Until We Say Good-bye
and held one out to Stavroula. “We came for these. They're for us, right?” Litza forced herself to keep her arm outstretched.
Take it
, Litza said to herself.
Dear Stavroula, Take it
.

“Yes, a gift. One each,” her father said, a little surprised, also gleeful.

He was not concerned that Litza was in his office unattended. Or maybe he thought Stavroula was her supervision. Or maybe he'd like her to stay in his office the rest of the day, reading
To Live Until We Say Good-bye
, telling him why it was such a good gift. He was smiling.

Stavroula took the book.

He said, warming up, “The three of us, we can have lunch. We can talk all this unfinished business.”

Litza shook the book as if it contained coins. “We already took care of business.”

She got up. She got out as fast as she could. She took the photo from her pocket, and she tucked it into the car's visor as if it might bring good luck, which maybe it did. She threw the book under her seat.

When Stavroula and Litza came to the States, Carol taught them how to take a shower, how to zip a baggie, how to turn on a TV set, how to flush the toilet, which they already knew. She taught them English words that Ba-ba didn't—
leaves, underwear, sandbox, McDonald's
(which they already knew). She taught them that
jeans
did not start with a Z. When Stavroula got
elephant
wrong on a quiz in kindergarten (
Carol, what is elephant?),
Mother turned her arm into a trunk and trumpeted. Stavroula, delighted that
elephant
was something she knew now, did it, too. Litza did it, too, without knowing what elephant was; she did it because Stavroula was doing it. Stavroula learned that American food tastes like paper and is served on paper; children are fed but do not actually eat because what they eat looks like toys, not food. Also, she was shown how ketchup is not sauce for spaghetti, a lesson she would never forget. Because Ba-ba came home late, Mother put the sisters to bed each night, which meant letting them curl into a pile on the couch until they got drowsy. She stroked their backs. Stavroula could tell that Carol wanted them to be lulled but never forget that it was her doing. Carol whispered, “Call me Mother when you're ready to.” Stavroula did right away. Litza took longer.

Their second month back in the States, starting on Monday, Litza's freckle was the size of a pin: only a mother who had spent long days staring at a child's face would have been able to spot it, so no one spotted it. On Tuesday, it was the size of a pencil eraser. On Friday, Litza woke Stavroula up because her face itched. The entire left side of her face was surly with pus. Mother was panicked, couldn't get the child—who was growing exponentially more infected cells than little-girl ones—into shoes fast enough.

Stavroula did not understand why they were not bringing her to the doctor's office, too. She knew Litza's likes and dislikes, her real cries from her phony ones. She knew that Litza slept on her side with her arms shoved between her legs, as if she were hiding a pork chop she wanted to save for herself. Stavroula knew Litza better than anyone, and if there was something wrong with her, Stavroula would be able to translate. She said to her father, in Greek, “I have a question for you, Ba-ba. To help Litza.” By question, she meant she had some knowledge for the special doctor. But Ba-ba was putting on shoes that meant work. The cigarette on his lip tipped up and down, in time with his speaking. He gave Mother money and a kiss on the lips, Stavroula a touch on her face. Litza cried because he gave her nothing.