The Clover House (14 page)

I turn and look at her with what must certainly be a goofy smile.

“Are you all right, Paki?”

“Come see this.”

She comes over to the box and peers in.

“The sand,” she says, with a laugh.

“We used to pull this out all the time. It’s like he couldn’t tell a story without starting here.”

“I think that was your thing, just the two of you.”

“Not you?”

She shakes her head.

“You were his audience, Paki. That’s why he left the stuff for you.”

Aliki goes into the kitchen, but I stay there by the wooden chest for a moment longer. Of all the things of Nestor’s that I
have found and will find before I finish this task, I know that this archive of sand is what I want with me. It’s a strange legacy, but it’s mine, a chronicle written in something that never holds a trace.

I watch as Aliki gathers the coffee makings, seemingly at home in Nestor’s kitchen. I, too, could have had this familiarity if I had not chosen to stay away for so long. Nestor and his loving home with its collections and recordings; the protective touch of Thalia’s hand on my arm; having a
parea
, a group of Greek friends of my own: This is what I gave up when I cut myself off from my mother’s world. My world.

Aliki holds the little coffeepot so that it hovers over the gas flame, raising it and lowering it as the liquid froths. She pours me a tiny cup and slides it across Nestor’s marble-topped table. She rummages in a cupboard and brings out a tube of Pti Ber biscuits, and I smile at the recollection of the bus ride—only yesterday but seeming so much longer ago. She holds it toward me as she sits down, and I slip two biscuits out, pushing with my thumbnail against the cellophane.

“Petit beurre,”
I say, with the aunts’ French accent. She laughs.

I sip the silty coffee, wondering why Nestor wanted to give all his things to me. I suppose this coffeepot, this table, are all mine now—or they will be as soon as I sign the Acceptance of Inheritance. Was he trying to weigh me down with possessions here so that I would stay? Did he understand more than I did my need to hold on to the stories of his and his sisters’ childhoods?

Then I remember the money he has left me and I blush. He has left Aliki the house because she has a family and can move into it now that he is dead. He has left me the money because I don’t. It is a bequest of pity. And that’s what I feel for myself
now, as I think of Aliki with her husband and her daughter, with her mother and her beloved
Theia
Sophia coming over to bustle around their loving home. I feel tears starting and can’t believe I’m letting this get to me.

“Listen,” I say. “You’ve given me a lot to think about just now. Would you mind if I didn’t go to the parade with you?”

“Demetra will be disappointed.”

This hurts, and she knows it. I want her to say that
she
will be disappointed, that they really want me with them.

“I just don’t think I’d be very good company tonight.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug, knowing that if she keeps showing me concern, I will certainly begin to cry. “Everybody has somebody.” She squints at me, cocks her head. “You all belong to someone. To each other.”

“For all the good it does us.”

I try to laugh.

“Paki, shhh.” She brushes the hair from my forehead, and I take the deepest breath I think I’ve ever taken in my life. “Nikos and I are ready to kill each other half the time,” she says. “Never mind the aunts. You are so lucky you live so far away.”

She realizes what she has said and leans forward, covering my hand with hers.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” she says softly. “You belong to someone. You belong to
us
. And you can have your Jonah,” she says the name like a question, “if you want him.”

After a minute, I draw my hand away and wipe the tears from my face.

“I think I’ll feel better if I take some time to be alone tonight,” I say. “I need to think.”

“Okay, Paki
mou
. Okay.” She’s talking to me as if I were Demetra’s age. And I love it.

I take another sip of coffee, even though there is no liquid left. I end up with muddy grounds in my mouth. By the time I pull the cup away from my face, Aliki has risen from the table and is collecting the coffee things to wash them in the sink.

A
t the apartment, Aliki does the explaining for me, in hushed tones that tamp down Demetra’s protests before they can swell into full-on complaint. Nikos pokes his head into the guest room.

“Wise woman,” he says. “We’ll come home deaf and hung-over, and you’ll be rested and serene. Secret to a long life.”

“Yeah, but who wants a long one if it’s boring?”

“You can still change your mind. In fact, I’ll stay here and do your man-thinking for you, and you go hold Demetra’s sweaty, sticky hand for three hours. Deal?”

“Fat chance.”

Aliki tugs Demetra into the room. The girl is pouting.

“Demetra, I promise I’ll take you to another parade, okay? I only got here yesterday, remember. We have plenty of time, and plenty of Carnival, to spend together.”

“Okay.”

She kisses me on the cheeks, a child’s light, sweet-smelling kiss.

“Now go get your coat,” Aliki tells her. “There are leftovers in the fridge,” she says to me, “and to turn on the TV just hit the big red button and that’ll turn the sound system on. Take care of yourself, Paki.”

We kiss on the cheeks, and she is out the door.

The apartment is silent. I stretch out on the narrow bed and look up at the ceiling, afraid of the thoughts I’m supposed to spend the evening with, half-hoping that I’ll fall asleep. But I
can’t relax. I get up and reprise my previous night’s walk around the rooms, ending up at the paired photographs of Aliki and me on that childhood beach and by Olympia’s ruins. I think of what Aliki said to me at Nestor’s house this afternoon, about how I belong to someone, to Jonah.

I go to the low chair in the foyer and pick up the phone. It’s the old receiver, with a thin Bakelite handle connecting mouthpiece and speaker. I crank the dial around and wait for Jonah’s office phone to ring.

“Jonah Sullivan.”

I hear the rustling of papers. He’s picked up without looking at the caller ID.

“It’s me.”

“Hi.” His voice is soft now, hesitant. “How is it going?”

“Okay. There’s a lot to do.”

“Did you see your mother?”

“Yes.” I feel scolded somehow.

“And?”

“She keeps calling you Jason.” I laugh.

“You told her?”

“She knows about you, Jonah.” I’m smiling, but I can’t even convince myself that this is a lighthearted moment.

“About us. She must have seen the ring.”

“She doesn’t notice things.”

“And you didn’t point it out.” He doesn’t ask. He knows the answer already.

“That’s not a conversation I want to have with my mother.”

“Callie, you can’t let her control you like that. So she’s a hard-ass, or a bitch, or whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why should I tell her, if she doesn’t matter?”

“She should know her daughter just got engaged.”

“That would work for your mother, not mine.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“See, this is what you don’t get, Jonah. You can’t really understand that it’s possible for a mother and her kid to not have any connection at all. I don’t want my mother in my life anymore. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t want me in hers either.”

He must hear something in my voice, because his response is tender and quiet.

“You deserve better, Callie. I will give you better.”

I can’t say anything for a little while. What Jonah said should move me, but mostly it terrifies me. He evokes these powerful bonds and connections, but all I can think of is what will happen when the cables snap and lash like whips at the poor souls holding on to either end.

“You there?”

“Yeah,” I say. “But I should go. It’s Aliki’s phone bill.”

“You can pay her back.”

“I know, but it’s easier if I keep it short.”

“Sure.”

“We’ll talk again, Joe. I promise.”

We say our goodbyes and I-love-yous and hang up. I sit back in the little chair and wipe the tears with my palms. I don’t know what I expected from that conversation. Some kind of transformation of myself? A wave of insight that would show me the right way forward, the right way back to Jonah? All I know is that I feel deeply alone, and all I want is to stand with my cousin and her family—my family—in a crowd of people, cheering at the floats and dancers in the parade.

I haven’t undressed, so all I have to do is grab my coat from the closet. In a few seconds, I am in the elevator, descending toward the noisy Carnival streets. Momentum carries me through the lobby and as far as Ellinos Stratiotou Street, which
runs almost exactly into Plateia Georgiou, George’s Square. The street is crammed with traffic now as people head home from what little work they have managed to do during Carnival, and others head into the center of the city for the night’s festivities. Many of these people sport some sort of Carnival decoration, like antennae on a headband, or a giant felt flower in their lapel, or a hat made of crepe and LED lights. I wonder if they have gone to their offices like this or simply whisked their Carnival accessories out just now, anxious to be festive.

Closer to Plateia Georgiou, there are mimes on street corners,
tableaux vivants
in shop windows, musicians on the sidewalk. The first installment of the citywide Treasure Hunt began today, and I can see groups of searchers darting through the steadier crowd as they scramble for clues. The crowd becomes denser as I near the square, and everyone seems to be dancing to the loudspeaker beat I can feel in my sternum. I wonder how I will ever find Aliki and Nikos and Demetra among all these people.

They might find me more easily. I stand out, I’m sure, as the only woman in Patras who isn’t dressed to impress. All around me are women in tight trousers and silky button-front blouses showing plenty of cleavage, which their open coats do nothing to conceal. Aliki doesn’t dress flashy, but even she was sporting heels and a clingy sweater when they left the apartment. I am still wearing my boot-cut jeans and my white turtleneck sweater from the morning. I look young for thirty-five, but I am dressed the way these other women would dress to do yard work.

For various reasons, I am thinking this whole thing was a ridiculous idea. Never mind how out of place I look; how could I possibly have expected to find two people and their little girl in a crowd of thousands, in the dark? I start to turn back when I see a purple velvet hat poking up above the crowd. I stand on
tiptoes and, sure enough, it’s Stelios. I realize that my route has brought me to the northeast corner of Plateia Georgiou, exactly where Anna said she and Stelios would be.

Giving in to impulse, I push through the crowd toward where I spotted the hat.

I feel two hands on my waist.

“Geia sou, ré,”
comes a voice in my ear, and I turn to see Stelios’s face peering over my shoulder. A few people in front of me, I see Anna jumping up and waving. Now she is the one wearing Stelios’s hat low over her eyebrows.

“You came after all,” he says.

“I came.” It’s too loud here for me to explain that I was looking for someone else.

“Anna!” I call, and Stelios, with his hands still on my waist, steers me toward her. This seems a little odd to me, but I figure it’s part of the Carnival atmosphere.

“Callie!” she yells. “Callie, Callie.”

“
Geia sou
, Callie,” says a man standing beside her.

“Andreas,” Anna says, by way of introduction.
“Ela.”
She tugs me by the hand across the street that rings the Plateia. Here the crowd thins among the café tables warmed by propane heaters. Anna is dressed in the same style as the other women: a silver blouse unbuttoned to there and lavender trousers beneath a long white coat with astrakhan trim. A hot-pink feather boa circles her neck.

“The hat matches your trousers,” I say.

“I know!” When she laughs long at this observation, I realize she is quite drunk.

I look around at the rest of the
parea
and see that Stelios and the others appear to have had less to drink, though they are all ahead of me. We sit at one of the cafés and order several beers, and soon I have caught up. I can stand, I can see clearly, but my
limbs feel loose and easy, and I slouch back into the low chair, tipping my chin up as I laugh at a joke, twisting my head languorously to follow the conversation.

Most of the talk is inside jokes and stories about previous exploits. This is a group that has been to Carnival many times together.

“Maki, here, is from Patras,” Stelios says to me at one point. “Callie’s family is from here,” he says to the giant, round young man who is sitting on Stelios’s other side.

“What’s your name?”

“Notaris,” I say, a name I hardly ever hear or say. In my lifetime, it belonged only to Nestor and to nobody now.

Maki shakes his head.

“Nope. I’m Makopoulos. Ring any bells?”

“No,” I say, leaning over Stelios. “Maki Makopoulos, I have never ever heard of you.” Then I say to Stelios, “This isn’t that guy you called
maláka
on the phone yesterday?”

He laughs in a sudden enough burst that Maki wants to know what I said. Stelios looks back at me and winks and tells Maki it’s nothing.

People on the edge of the square begin cheering. The crowd pushes toward the cafés and nearly knocks over the people in chairs at the outer edge. We all get up and stand on our chairs to see the parade, which is now making its way across the top of Plateia Georgiou. The music of several different bands has melded into one cacophony punctuated by the rhythmic peals of somebody’s whistle. Among the musicians are groups of dancers in brightly colored costumes, some of them seeming to move in unison and others simply prancing down the street. Some dancers carry large papier-mâché heads on long poles. I hope Demetra has a good view of all this. She must be up on
Nikos’s shoulders. Among the dancers are several enormous floats—homecoming-queen style—and flying banners scrawled with political jokes. This is Greece, where beauty and politics are twin obsessions.