Nicolai's Daughters (14 page)

She walked towards the bench where Theodora sat. “
Kalimera
,” she said. She raised her eyebrows, tried to fasten a casual, friendly smile in place. She dropped the pack on the bench.

Theodora smiled. “Good afternoon.”

“Yes, you're right, it is the afternoon,” Alexia said. “I'm still learning Greek.”

“It is very difficult language,” Theodora said. The bright hazel of one eye contrasted against the dark brown of the other. Her cheeks were red and the skin at the edges of her nose was raw. She twisted a Kleenex between her fingers.

“Nice shoes,” Alexia said, avoiding Theodora's eyes. “You're the first person, besides my aunt Maria, who wears anything but black flats and dark skirts.” Why am I blabbing like an idiot? She pushed the pack to one side, sat down and tucked her hands underneath her. She took a deep breath and tried to steady her voice. A chill caught her and her shoulders shook.

“Where are you from?” Theodora blew her nose. “You have family here?”

“Aunts and uncles and cousins.”

“I have no family but my husband's. My mother dead since five years.”

“And your father?” Here I am talking to her as if I'm talking to any other stranger I meet on the street, Alexia thought. This is my half-sister. Be careful.

“My mother had a good friend who was like my stepfather. He retired to his island after she died. My real father died before they could marry,” she said. “This is the shame of my family, according to my mother-in-law, who doesn't let me forget I have no father. My mother never married and she never wore black, like widows must.”

Alexia shook her head. Her hands ached against the wooden slats of the bench. She pulled them out, looked at the angry slices imprinted across her hands.

“What is wrong?”

“Um, nothing, I'm just listening.” Your real father didn't die, she wanted to say. Your mother lied to you. Will the time ever come when I might say these things to you?

“I am sorry,” Theodora said. “We normally keep these things to ourselves. I am upset. I do not know what I am saying. Forgive me.”

“You're talking to a Canadian. We're used to airing our dirty laundry.”

Theodora stared at her. “We hang clothes after we wash them. Not when dirty.”

Alexia laughed and turned. “It's just a silly expression. Hard to explain.”

Theodora's son waddled over, pointing to a place on his arm. Theodora examined his chin and pudgy arm. She dabbed at his eyes with her sleeve, found a wet cloth in her bag and wiped his face. “You be the death of me, Nicolai.”

“That was my father's name,” Alexia whispered. A strand of hair fell out of its braid and flew across her eyes. She pushed the hair away. It tumbled across her eyes again. She folded her hands in her lap, gazed out towards the swings.

“This is a common name here. It was my mother's favourite name,” Theodora said. “I call him Nicky to make it shorter.”

“It's a very good name,” Alexia said. “Not so common in Canada.”

“Would you like to come back to my house for coffee? It looks like the rain will get worse. Or you prefer tea? I live very close to this park.”

Alexia fiddled with the strap on her pack. I can't come to your house, she wanted to say. I barely know you. And what are we going to talk about? The truth might slip out. I might end up leaving this pack with you. Then what do we do? It's too soon for all that. She stood up to leave, slung the pack over both shoulders and lurched backwards slightly under its weight.

Theodora turned away. “This is our Greek hospitality,” she said. “We are too friendly. It is how we do things. That is all.”

Alexia saw the curve of Theodora's back, her narrow shoulders. She told herself she should leave right this minute while she had a chance. Instead, she said, “Why not?”

2010

Theodora jumped. The angry rattling caught her off guard every time. She glanced at the back door. Andreas was shaking the handle and twisting it back and forth. His special touch, as he liked to call it, wasn't working. One day that door wouldn't open at all, but there was no talking to him about fixing it. Like everything else, he had to do it in his own time.

The latch clicked into place. He was standing just inside the doorway.

The kitchen with its pale blue cupboards looked like a child's dollhouse when Andreas was standing in it. Even the cypress trees in the yard behind him shrank.

They stared at each other for a moment, as strangers sometimes do when they realize they are in the wrong place. Theodora finally smiled. His jacket was buttoned to hide most of the bloodstains, but he couldn't cover up everything about his work. “Your apron is dirty again,” she said.

“I wipe my hands. That's what it's for.”

“And the rags I made?” she asked in a mothering tone.

“I couldn't find one.”

Theodora shook her head. “I told you to keep them close. Where you work.” Last night as she did laundry, she cursed him when the bleach she used to soak his aprons burned her hands and stung her eyes.

But, today, she couldn't be mad at him. Her eyes softened.

“I dropped the lamb.” His shoulders were rounded; his arms like large unmoveable tree trunks by his sides.

He was tired. The circles under his eyes were darker.

“Then, it sprayed back when I tried to carve away the fat,” he said.

“You have no pity for me, the work I have to do in this house.”

Yesterday, when they'd had the same conversation, his arms were behind his back. He smiled as if he couldn't wait to share his surprise. “What is it?” she asked and tugged at his arms until he produced the box of
galaktoboureko.
The custard-filled pastry was her favourite. He brought them home once or twice a week and never took one unless she offered it to him. “Go on,” she said.

He pushed the box away. “They're for you.”

“For us. Come on, take one.”

Today, he stood empty-handed by the door. His high cheekbones and large hooked nose jutted forward as if trying to escape. His deep, brown eyes usually moistened whenever he saw her. It had been that way since they were children playing behind the school or in her mother's yard.

Theodora got up and the chair fell to the floor behind her. “And I call you clumsy.” She laughed. She walked over to him in that slow way she knew he liked. He looked away. She was glad that she could still do this to him.

Whenever she reached out for him, he would pick her up and bring her close so her head fell into the crook of his neck. He teased her. “I have my own little princess.”

This time, he crossed his arms. She stood in front of him until he looked at her. She held his gaze until he finally nodded, grinned slightly and dropped his arms. She cuddled into him, her head against his chest. He squeezed her shoulder, his other arm by his side. His jacket reeked of meat. Still she hung on.

“I've never heard my mother complain,” he said. “Housewives have to take care of their houses, their men, their children.”

She pretended to scratch her nose and kept her fingers close to her face, using her own familiar scent to diminish his. Complaining, digging at me in that mean-spirited way of hers is the only thing your mother ever does, she thought. She breathed through her mouth, told herself to let his comment go. It wasn't worth fighting over.

As children, Theodora and Andreas played in her mother's backyard or roamed the fields by the inlet. They kicked his soccer ball up and down the schoolyard and when they had a match, he played goalkeeper, letting in her feebly kicked balls.

“Stop cheating,” Theodora said.

“I'm trying to help,” he said, holding the ball to his chest.

“With this help of yours, I won't get any better. Stop it.” She punched his arm and the ball dropped. Her feet kicked the ball out of his reach. She lined up the ball and booted it as hard as she could. He dived for it and missed.

The other children ignored Theodora or whispered things behind her back. “What do they say?” she asked Andreas. They sat with their backs against the spreading oak tree behind the school, shoulder touching shoulder, lunch pails on their laps.

“Stupid things,” he said. “I don't know.” He threw his sandwich into his pail.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” He stood up and looked out into the distance. Theodora followed his gaze to the chain link fence.

“I can't wait until we get out of this place,” he said.

Theodora brushed the dirt from her skirt as she got up off the ground.

“Can I come over to your house after school?” he asked.

“We never go to your house anymore.”

“I know,” he said. “I don't…”

“Your mom doesn't like me either.”

Andreas wrestled his arm around her throat, held her head close to his chest and messed up her hair as he would with one of his male friends. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

As they got older, Andreas would bloody the mouths of the boys who teased Theodora.

“Why were you in another fight?” Theodora asked him.

“I just get mad sometimes.”

“Did that boy say something?”

“About what?” Andreas asked.

“I don't know.”

“No, nothing.” He shrugged.

“You're lying.”

“It's not worth it,” he said. “You have to keep things to yourself. You know.”

He didn't have to tell her, Theodora knew what was said about her and her mother. She heard the whispers. Was Andreas defending her? She could fight her own battles. She'd do what she had always done. Ignore what they said and after a long time, they would leave her alone.

On her sixteenth birthday, he gave her a gold necklace. A diamond that looked like a tiny sliver of glass sat encased in a pendant the shape of a miniature hand. He kissed her neck. She turned to meet his gaze. He looked away.

“I want to,” she said, and kissed him.

When they graduated from high school, Theodora's mother insisted she go to university. Andreas worked in his father's butcher shop. “You go,” he said to Theodora when she complained she didn't want to go to Athens. “One day I'll have my own shop and you will come back and help me with the books, everything.”

“Won't you miss me?” she asked.

He smiled. “Maybe.”

Home after the first year of university, they met by the beach. She stood in front of him. His hands were in his pockets and he looked at his feet. “So I suppose you like living in the big city,” Andreas said. “You've made lots of friends. The village is boring to you now.”

“It's the same as here,” she said, and touched his arm. She hadn't made friends in university either and wondered if people could see her mother's shame even when they didn't know anything about her. “I don't want to go back.”

“Marry me,” he said. “And you won't have to.”

“My mother would kill me.”

“No, she won't. You're being dramatic.”

“She wants me to have a better life, get out of this place.”

“What's wrong with this place?” he asked. “I'm here.”

“I remember when you wanted to get away.”

“This is our home,” he said. “It's different. We're not in school anymore.”

“Not different. Your mother still hates me.”

“She doesn't.”

“I haven't been to your house since we were children.”

“Come next Sunday.”

They sat on Elena's straw-covered chairs at her wooden table in her oversized kitchen the following Sunday. Platters of marbled roast beef, roasted chicken, fried sausage and rare lamb lay like sacrificial offerings. Theodora tried to look away, but her eyes would somehow skirt back to the platters. She had to be polite. Her mother had taught her well. But how could she eat any of this?

Andreas's brothers and their wives, aunts, uncles and cousins all came that day. She wasn't used to so many people. They seemed nice. They asked her where she'd bought her red dress and the high heels with the splash of red at the toe.

“My mother got me this dress in Athens,” she said. “We go there once a month.”

Andreas's sisters-in-law shared a glance and smiled tightly. One nodded, the other winked. Theodora's face felt warm.

“My mother's friend George bought the shoes for me in Corfu,” Theodora said.

A cousin at the opposite end of the table said, “Some are lucky,” then swallowed hard as if what was in her mouth had gone down her throat the wrong way. “Marriage will change all this.”

“It doesn't have to,” Andreas said.

“He opens a shop,” his sister-in-law said, “and he thinks he's a millionaire.”

His mother smiled slightly, but didn't look up from her plate, while the others nodded. “It's good to have dreams,” she said. “Better still to have family who can help make your dreams come true.”

Andreas shot his mother an angry look.

Now what? Theodora wondered. What had she done to upset Andreas or his mother? Elena had been very sweet to her, kissing and hugging her when she came in, walking her to the kitchen, her arm laced in Theodora's. She didn't know why she'd worried herself sick about coming here today.

Plates of roasted zucchini, eggplant, peppers, garlic and tomatoes were passed around first. Then the heavy platters of meat. Theodora took only vegetables and a few spoons of beans. The meat was passed to her again. “You must eat. You have nothing on your plate,” Andreas's brother Petros said.

“I don't like meat,” she said over the loud chatter. “I haven't eaten it since I was a child.”

The multiple conversations sputtered. Petros rolled his eyes; his wife readjusted her napkin on her lap. A few others stared at Theodora.

Theodora looked at Andreas, wondered what he was thinking. He glanced over at Elena. Sitting at the head of the table, she finished chewing, wiped her mouth, folded her napkin and put it beside her plate. “You know,” she said slowly, her eyes dark as coal, “it's nice to be an intellectual. My son tells me you went to university for, what was it? A year or so?”

Theodora nodded. So they've talked about me. That's good, she thought.

“But they don't teach you everything in those places.” She shook her head. “God gave us this meat to enjoy. Yes or no?” Elena said.

Theodora reached for Andreas's hand. His head was bowed; both hands were clasped together on the table. She turned to face his mother alone.

“There was no such thing as we can't eat this or that when I was a child,” Elena said. “It's good that children have so much these days. You are all very lucky.”

“Mamma, things change,” Andreas said. “Theodora grew up this way.”

“Yes, we can't blame our little
xanthoula
,” Elena said.

“At least she likes the butcher.” Andreas hugged Theodora.

Everyone laughed. When Elena smiled, her eyetooth peeked out between her lips spiking her bottom lip. She patted her mouth with a napkin. The tooth disappeared.

The conversation went back to how Andreas's new shop was going, which led to why cousin Anna was getting a divorce, what was going on with Uncle Yanni and his girlfriend, a young woman from Athens who kept him away from the family, and how Cousin Dmitri was so smart, he'd been accepted into the London School of Economics
.
“His mother should be thankful,” Elena said. “But she complains. He is too far from home. She'll never see him. Those English girls are wild. That woman is never happy.” Theodora listened, glad the conversation was no longer about her.

Andreas stroked her hand under the table.

“You could do anything,” Theodora's mother said when she told her she was getting married. “Finish university first. Then see if you still feel the same way.”

“I don't want to go back to Athens.”

Theodora married Andreas on a rainy day in June. “Rain brings good luck,” Theodora told her mother, who sat with her friend George on one side of the church. George had lived with them since Theodora was a child.

“You're so young,” her mother said, wiping a tear away.

George put his arm around her mother's shoulders. “She's emotional. Don't worry.” Her mother looked away.

She hoped things would change with Elena after she married Andreas. But the name Elena gave her,
xanthoula
, ‘the little blonde', stuck to Theodora.

“This is a term of endearment,” Elena said.

“My name is who I am,” Theodora had said.

“Yes and no,” Elena had said. “Besides, this suits me. It is easy for an old woman like me to remember.”

Life didn't get any easier with her mother-in-law. “Oh, I don't want you to go to any trouble just for me,” Elena said when Theodora made some meatless dishes she hoped Elena would try. “Who am I, after all? I'm only your husband's mother.”

“I thought to try a different dish,” Theodora said.

“Different can be good, but this is your husband's work. Are you ashamed of him?”

“If he picked up garbage for a living, would I have to like garbage?” Stop being angry, she told herself. The woman is just trying to be helpful.

“He's a butcher,” Elena had replied. “A good one. Or don't you think so?”

“Why do you think I don't?”

“You didn't have a father to take care of you and teach you things,” Elena said. “You have a good husband now. You take care of him. I know you already know this. But you don't want to be alone when you are old, like your mother. Do you?”

It wasn't her fault that her father had died before her parents could marry. It wasn't her fault that her mother never married George. But none of this mattered to her mother-in-law or anyone else. She had understood this from the time she was a child. All the other kids had teased her that she was a bastard.