Let Me Explain You (42 page)

But if Marina does not, it means denying a dying man his wish.

And depriving the world of the last, last supper, perhaps the most glorious meal of Marina's life. A meal, after all, of thanks. A meal that may have nothing to do with Stavros Stavros and all to do with her, the blessing of living, the life that she has lived alongside him.

A letter has come to Marina, after all. It is in the common language—not Greek, but rather in the communication of food. And it is staked through the heart. The letter is not a letter; it is an order, written on the lined green pads the waitresses use. It is posted on the chef's planchette as if it may have been there all along. It was not: she would have known.

It is there now.

It is insistent:
goat
.

What she can make Stavros Stavros is meats, cheeses, a feast, a tray of just grapes, her best recipes and the ones they discovered together, bread, three salads, pork.

But the letter demands:
goat
.

Cannot. Marina cannot. Yet must.

And does.

At seven in the morning the girls feast on desserts, Marina can hear them. It is good, finally they are forced into a single boat and will row, row together. Marina, alone, goes outside. The back door clatters behind her.

Marina, with a curved knife, displays the goat's mysterious throat.

It is done.

The animal collapses, shaking to the earth, and Marina coos it to its death. Marina, always, always, holding the parts of the animal that cannot be held, that have been spilled. They bleed through her fingers.

This is a compassionate killing, Marina hopes, she hopes to God.

She scatters salt, excising evil, blessing this place.

In her scattering, Marina's wrist mimics the sputter of the goat's willful, lifeless kicks.

The day of mourning stretches so long, it will be a surprise if it does not reach everybody.

The letter demands goat. OK, goat.

But Marina demands: marrow. Great knotty logs of it, which she will roast for the here and gone, and they will eat at first with a spoon and some bread crust, and then plunge their tongues and fingers in it, and suck on the bone until they realize: there is no going deeper than this.

Blessed are those whose way is blameless
, the
pappas
chants.

Incense clouds the air at his knees.

The
pappas
wears a thick gold cloak and square black hat, shrouded in black and circled in gray.

The
agia trapeza
is a table with gold crucifix, the saints, and a hundred beeswax candles, placed there by the faithful.

The diner tables are cleared. There are rows of chairs facing the
pappas
, and they are filled with familiar, nameless people. Hero is there. The mistress is not. Dina is not. The family sits in a booth, Stavroula and Litza on one side, Mother and Ruby and Ruby's new husband on the other.

The
pappas
intones the Small Litany. At the third stasis, on the verse
early in the morning the myrrh-bearers came to thee and sprinkled myrrh upon thy tomb
, the
pappas
sprinkles rosewater.

He offers the Amomos, the
blameless
.

When he sings, the skin of his face becomes smooth, like a page.

When he begins the memorial service, the
pappa
s
's English is as cracked and elegant as driftwood. He asks, “What does it mean, really, to lose someone? What does it mean to say they are no longer with us?”

The
pappas
never stops swinging the censer. He offers hymns, prayers that Stavroula does not understand. This does not feel like a funeral—or a memorial, whatever it's meant to be. It feels like the
pappas
is a man reading foreign poetry, and all of these people are indulging him because they sense he has lost someone very dear. Patiently, they are waiting for him to stop speaking so they can return to their meals and conversation, joyous cutlery. They will buy his red carnations out of pity, if he would only let them and be gone.

Stavroula smells myrrh, also cigarette through the clean shower scent on Litza. Both sisters have their hands in their laps, and neither of them cries. Stavroula's eyes are cooking, and she thinks Litza must feel the same. How many days have they gone without sleep? Stavroula has trouble listening to the
pappas
. This is not the way she feels things, out in the open. Rather, she feels things in small cuts, with fine tools she holds close to her body. Otherwise she feels: nothing. Stavroula would like to go back to the kitchen with Marina, who, to nobody's surprise, is avoiding the
pappa
s
's poetry. But Stavroula cannot leave, Stavroula has brought everyone here. Mother is taking turns petting their hands and smiling kindly on the girls. She is nicely dressed, with tasteful jewelry, but instead of the black he demanded, she is wearing a bright pastel shirt in the spirit of Easter.

The first thing Mother said when she came in was, “It was just an email.” As if she expected one of them to disagree. When they didn't, she took them in her arms. Stavroula did not think they would all fit, but they did, coming together in an amorphous shape that seemed to spill out of itself. Mother would not let them go, even when Stavroula tried to pull away. Mother was crying, ruining her makeup. She kept saying, “My girls. My little orphans.”

Ruby, who was crying without shame, said, “He won't be here to see our children.”

Stavroula, lighting her own candle at the
pappa
s
's request, is realizing she may have the most hope. Litza, the least. Litza, drifting through the last few hours. She is lifting the dark material of her skirt and scratching her thigh, the same place. It is becoming raw. She's wearing sunglasses and has not cried since this morning at the airport.

The
pappas
interrupts his own service. In English, he explains that he has been called to do a job he cannot do. “I am summoned to give repose for the dear departed, but who is departed? Who is here for us to give our goodbyes?

“How do I, a humble messenger for the Lord, give comfort when we cannot even point to a wound? How do we forgive what we cannot see? How do we let go of someone already gone and yet still so here?

“Ah,
paidi mou
, that is the mystery of faith. We accept that there is truth even in knowledge that is kept from us.

“Even if we cannot wash Him and dress Him and lay Him to rest and watch Him rise on the third day: we must relent that He died for our sins for reasons we, his children, can never understand.

“You believe that just because God is invisible to you, He is invisible to your pain? No, you are not alone. He will be with you always. He was there at your birth, only you can't remember. For your first breath. He will be there in your last, for your suffering.”

Stavroula has been trying to quiet her sister's hand. Litza pulls the material of the skirt tight around her legs.

“The time it takes for a glass to tip, and one drop of water to spill.

That is the brevity of life that I am talking about.

That is what God asks me to remind you of, His children.

At the end of this service, you must all extinguish your candles. And you will think to yourself, this is all there is: one strong wind comes, and I am blown out. At the end, I have to surrender my soul.

“But before that happens, you must claim it.”

The little bell above the door rings, and the door opens. Stavroula turns and cannot believe what she sees: her father, wearing a light-blue shirt and gray pants, sunglasses. He still has the beard that brought her into this country, a beard she mistakenly believed as a child that she could hang on to, not realizing that it was like tree bark in that it only looked strong. His arms are raised, and he is coming for them. Litza sees him, too. Litza takes Stavroula's hand beneath the table.

But it is not their father. It is only a man who looks like him.

Litza wrenches her hand away. She leaves the booth. The kitchen door is swinging shut behind her, and for a moment, Stavroula thinks to follow.

But the
pappas
summons. She must deliver the eulogy, the ἐγκώμιο, which roughly translates to “praise.” She has taken it upon herself.

Dear Dad.

Litza knows something isn't right. She pushes through the door and goes directly to the sink in the Slop Room, and she drinks water. The glass she has chosen is not clean, but she doesn't realize that until she is halfway through four airless gulps, and it isn't making her stop, anyway. Water feels like the antidote to everything the
pappas
is saying. It wasn't the man who entered—it was her thirst that drove her here. But the kitchen is eerie and quiet, a fan murmuring somewhere unseen. It feels like this is her father's tomb, and all she has to do is go behind these shelves and she will see his body on ice; see him floating in water; all she has to do is go around a corner, and she will see his body lying on top of all the letters he has written—even the unwritten ones.
Dear Dad: What do you have left to say?

What is behind the shelves?

It is something, it is something.

There are gaps where stacked pots meet the handles of other pots. She could put her eye to a hole and see. Is it the man with the beard? Has he followed her back here? The man too carefree to be her father's ghost, because even a young ghost must carry the burdens of a man's whole life. If it is her father's ghost and he has followed her here, she will not know how to scare it off. She has never known. Would Stavroula know how? No. Stavroula would not believe in their father's ghost, she would keep looking past it for the man she secretly thought existed. She has hope, still. But Litza does not have hope. Litza feels dread.

Plip-plop
, a drip. It is coming from the sink behind her.
Plip-plip-plop
. It is followed by a kind of moaning that Litza has heard before. She thinks of the wooden man made of clothespins, the one she broke and broke more, the one she buried as a child. The one that showed her the small frog sounds of her father's throat, so gentle they could exist neither on land nor water. This is the sound her father is leaving her with.

Litza braces herself and looks. She sees a wooden spoon. Next it is a trail of brown, like a dribbling of gravy.

It is Marina. Facedown, the apron pulled beneath her right knee as if that was what had caused the fall in the first place, and she will fix it as soon as she gets up. She is lying on the tile as if she knows what she is doing, as if there is some business here she must tend to, something secret on the kitchen floor that no one but her is meant to see, and she will get up, soon as she is done. She is facedown as if she knows how to do this better than anyone. But she is not getting up.

Next to the body of Marina is Stavros Stavros Mavrakis. Crouching on his haunches, his left hand over his face, his shoulders shaking. As if he has been here all along, the one place they forgot to check. He is crying. His hand is squeezing Marina's shoulder, over, over, over as if to say, Not yet.

When he finally looks up at her, his daughter, he holds out one hand to say, Come.

Today I address to you with a whole, and heavy sadness.

We lose the person, Marina, that never we should lose.

I never believe, in all my life, that this woman of miracles could die, or that I, Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, known to you as Steve, could give up my partner of thirty years. Or that I, Stavros, would stand before you to ask that you memorialize her.

Do you understand that she made meals out of bones?

Do you know she fed you, all of you?

I had a dream exactly ten days ago. The dream was a goat, and the goat was Death, and Death was promising to Stavros Stavros Mavrakis that he was coming. The leash on the goat would become the leash on the man, and the goat would lead me to a final resting place. Under this kind of stress, I did what any man would do: I tell my family of this warning, I ask them please to keep me in their prayers. I say to them, Look, here are ways of pain in life, and here is how, according to your father's wisdom, you can avoid pain, at least for a little. I give them fatherly advices.