The Greeks of Beaubien Street

by Jenkins, Suzanne

  “Who told you such a thing?” she asked, appalled.

  “I just know!” Jill was convinced she would suffer for this in some way, but she was going to enjoy the thrill of knowledge while she was able.

  “Okay, not another word until we get home, young lady.” Her grandmother could be stern; she was known to chase an errant child around town with a switch.

  They held hands in the lobby, waiting for the rest of the family members to come from their Sunday school classes. Her grandfather came out last. He helped the deacons count the money. Jill loved to hear him talk about the abundance of the tithe that Sunday or, as it sometimes was, the lack of. He was a tall, stately man with a shock of white hair that stood up on end unless he mashed it down with hair grease. Jill was judgmental about people’s professions from a young age. She knew her Papou was an intelligent, well-read man, yet he chose to run a grocery store. What was that all about? Only Jill would have the nerve to ask him. The other grandchildren avoided him at all costs; he was scary and strict. But Jill loved him. He was a dignified man who meant security and culture to her. If he wasn’t working, he was reading a book. She was proud of him. The other grandchildren didn’t live with him like Jill did. They would ask her, terrified, “Does he beat you?” She looked at them like they had two heads.

  “What are you talking about? You’re silly. Or maybe you’re just stupid.” And they would run off and tell their mothers or their grandmother that Jillian called them names. And she would answer right back, “They asked me if Papou beats me!” She loved to have the tables turned on her snivelly little cousins. One night when the family sat around the table together for dinner, Jill remembered that she wanted to ask her grandfather about his job. When there was a lull in the conversation, she spoke up.

  “Papou, why did you decide to work in the grocery store when you are such a smart man?” She saw her mother, who had gone white grab her father’s hand. Maybe she was going to get a beating after all. He turned to his little granddaughter and studied her face for a few minutes. Here was someone who was most like him, as his wife had said before. “She is wise for her years,” Eleni would say.

  “Come here, little one.” He pushed his chair back and patted his lap for Jill to climb up on. She hopped up and reached for his coffee cup without asking. She saw her mother put her head in her hand and with the other hand, grab her heart.

  “What do you think I should do for work?” he asked. She looked over his coffee cup at him, taking a sip. Then she put the cup down.

  “You would make a great speaker,” she said. Everyone laughed, except her mother.

  “I’m not sure I would make any money speaking. And I wanted to have something to leave to my sons after I die. I wanted to do something that would support our people.” Jill thought that was reasonable and told him so.

  “I want to do that, too. Support our people. Our people are the Greeks, right?” This was the last straw for Jill’s mother. She walked to her daughter and took her by the hand, pulling her off her grandfather’s lap.

  “If you will pardon me, Father,” she said to her father–in-law, and to her daughter, “That’s enough. You are very rude!” The grandparents didn’t want to contradict their daughter-in-law, so they didn’t say anything, but her Papou reached over and patted Jill’s arm. After that, Jill always felt like she could say anything to her grandparents, including the revelation that Miss Petrokas was pregnant.

  A few months later, Miss Petrokas would be relieved of her duties at Sunday school due to her very obvious condition.

  ~ ~ ~

  Peter Zannos was the first of the sons to leave Greektown. He was wildly in love with Joan Ruthmann, a vivacious and outspoken nursing student from Northville. They were both seniors at Wayne State, within walking distance to the store. But, they discovered almost immediately that Joan hated Greektown. The first time she accompanied Pete to the grocery for a Sunday dinner, she could barely mask her disgust. The thought that a meal was prepared in the horrible kitchen behind the counter was enough to make her lose her appetite. She went home to Northville the next day to announce to her mother that Peter was sprung from the loins of country bumpkins.

  “I hope he isn’t going to expect me to go there for every holiday,” Joan said. “Greek Easter will be enough, but only if it doesn’t fall on our Easter Sunday,” she said with distaste. “Honestly, his mother looks like a dignified person, but then I caught her staring at me with her eyelids lowered; it gave me the creeps, like she was trying to read my mind or put a spell on me. Ugh! She should be wearing a black babushka like that peasant woman at the gun shop.”

  “I imagine his mother is a good cook, though,” Mrs. Ruthmann said, trying to find something positive about the situation. “I love Greek food!” When Joan announced that she may soon be engaged, all Faye Ruthmann could think of was that she might finally be relieved of the grind of preparing holiday meals for her family. She had raised six children and Joan was the last one. Won’t Joan spend Thanksgiving with Peter’s family? she wondered. Now, it wasn’t looking too promising. “Maybe you could give her another chance,” Faye pleaded. “Isn’t Peter going to be hurt if you don’t go?”

  “Are you kidding me? He doesn’t care at all. I don’t think he likes going there any more than I do. It’s completely chaotic. I’m still not sure who all the kids are or which of them even belong to Pete’s family. When we got there, a big group of relatives from Windsor had just arrived and the yelling and talking was deafening. I almost turned around and walked out.” The moment she walked over the threshold Joan started plotting how she was going to get out of there before dinner was served, and achieved success by telling Peter she had a headache. Let him convey the news, she thought.

  It was the last time she would go to the store in Greektown when other relatives were there. Peter continued going without her. He never hesitated until after their first baby, Sally Jane was born. It was winter, and miserable cold. They still pretended there was a possibility she might go along and he always invited her. Joan used the excuse of the drive on icy roads into Detroit being too risky, and kept silent about the abhorrence of taking a new baby to be spit on by her Greek relatives. She encouraged Peter to go without her.

  “I feel strange leaving you by yourself,” he said. “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “Absolutely sure! I want you to go and see your family. Give them my best.” Joan kissed Peter goodbye. They continued their lifetime routine of Joan staying behind while Peter went into Greektown alone.

  “Where’s your wife? I thought for sure she would come now that you have a baby. How are we supposed to get to know the kid?” Maria asked when Pete showed up after Sally was born. “Humph! Don’t think I like this very much.” Eleni was surprised, but withheld her opinion. It was more important that her son showed up, not who he dragged along.

  “It’s not your business, Maria. Keep your comments to yourself, please,” Eleni said. But Maria wasn’t shutting up.

  “She doesn’t like us?” Maria pressed him. Peter laughed out loud.

  “Stop! She doesn’t want to bring the baby out in this weather is all.” He took his boots off and left them at the door along with ten other pair neatly lined up. Customers were used to having to navigate around the pile. “I’m starving. What’s to eat?” His mother corralled her children together to go up to the apartment where she would serve them a meal, leaving the store open for business. It was hard enough to make a buck nowadays without their customers having to negotiate a pack of young adults standing around eating. The bickering about Joan continued as they walked up to the apartment.

  “How’d she get away with not showing up? I mean, I have to be here; she should, too,” Nick’s wife Paula complained. Brother John’s wife Liz nodded her head in agreement.

  “I wish I was home in front of my fireplace,” Liz replied. John turned his head and gave her a shut the hell up look. The smells of lamb and roasted potatoes were beginning to float down th
e staircase to greet them. They ate family style, with platters of food set in the center of the table and everyone digging in. No one minced words about Joan staying home, including her good friends Liz and Paula, but Peter didn’t mind. He regularly trashed his brother’s wives too, insinuating that Liz was a snob and Paula a gossip, but he did it in such a nice way that it took a few minutes for the real meaning of his comments to sink in. That Sunday Maria provided the perfect opportunity for Peter to show off his character assassination skills.

  “I was thinking of writing a newsletter for our Christmas card this year. Do any of you get them?” Maria asked. “I know Aunt Voola from Toronto sends one every year. So does Liz.”

  “We got one last Christmas as a matter of fact,” Peter answered. “From Liz.” He smiled at his sister-in-law.

  “Did you read it? My fear is that it’ll get thrown in the trash after I took the time to write it,” Maria said.

  “We didn’t have to read it. We’d had dinner with Paula and Nick the day before it arrived so any news we needed about Liz and John, we got right then,” Peter said. Nick did his best not to laugh out loud, but it took Paula longer to get the dig. When she did she laughed, embarrassed, hoping Peter wouldn’t go any further. She wracked her brain trying to remember the circumstances Peter was recalling. Peter and Joan, Nick and Paula, and Liz and John regularly socialized, but at that dinner almost a year ago, Liz and John couldn’t get away, making themselves a target for Paula’s cattiness. Paula blushed with the memory of the confidence she betrayed. Liz had complained to her about John’s lack of interest in sex, making it extra difficult for her to get pregnant.

  “I have to give myself these damn hormone injections every morning so I feel like a pin-cushion and then at night, he rolls over with his back to me,” Liz complained.

  “Sex is the only thing I never have to worry about. Nick is always ready,” Paula countered.

  “Paula, you’re so full of shit,” Liz replied. She didn’t say what she was thinking, however: I don’t see you getting pregnant.

  Peter was a kind-hearted jokester and didn’t go any further. He wasn’t going to divulge his brother’s personal business at Sunday dinner, or anywhere for that matter. He noticed Liz frowning across the table at Paula. The next time Joan invited the two other couples over, they both came. Liz wasn’t going to miss out again, thereby making herself a target. She’d never withheld any information about her life from her sister-in-law, but it wasn’t too late to start. For years after, Liz would abstain from sharing anything intimate about her life with John Zannos.

  ~ ~ ~

  Gus got up to pour more coffee, but Jill put her hand over his. “If I drink any more I’ll be up all night,” she said. “Tell me more about the aunts.” Gus scratched his neck, looking out onto the street through the glass door.

  “Now I’m really telling family secrets to you two. You both have to promise me you won’t repeat a word of this. I’d get in so much trouble with my sister if you did.” Both Andy and Jill nodded quickly in agreement. They loved family gossip. “Okay, well this happened a while ago, over twenty five years ago, I think. Sophie is a year older than I am, and she didn’t get married until she was in her early thirties, so yes, that’s about right. Her husband Joe,” he said in a clipped voice. Just her husband, Joe. Jill nodded her head quickly again, but Andy frowned.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever met the guy! Believe it or not,” he said. “But I have read about him and I’ve heard enough about him from my mom and pop.”

  Gus took a drink of coffee and settled back in his chair.

  “Like I said, Sophie is a year older than me. Maria was old enough to help downstairs in the store when we were youngsters, so Sophie and I played alone together upstairs unless we were off at school or out in the park. We were close as kids. As soon as she finished high school, she left home. We either got scholarships for college, or worked and paid our way as we went. That’s what Sophie did. She got a loan and started going to secretarial school. It had a small dormitory the female students could live in. She rarely came into town after that.

  “It was a one year program. After she graduated she got an apartment in Plymouth. Joan and Peter were getting married and moving there so he would be close to his job at Ford. They encouraged her to apply there, too. Sophie was hired to work in the public relations office. She was a dynamic woman. I think if there’s a case to be made for a woman staying single, it was Sophie. She had a great apartment and traveled all over the world with a couple of her girlfriends. But I knew she was lonely. She wanted kids, too, and back in those days it wasn’t as prevalent, or shall we say acceptable, to adopt a kid as a single parent. I mean, it was done, but we had a pretty conservative family and she would’ve suffered a lot of wrath from the parents and her brothers.

  “It wasn’t uncommon for Greeks to have arranged marriages, but I think my parents were too busy to arrange any for us. We were all engaged on our own steam by the time we were in college, except for Sophie. My mother was starting to bug her about finding someone, ‘a good Greek boy,’ and getting married. When I graduated from Drexel and Christina and I got married, my parents really started in on her. ‘Everyone else is married!’ they’d yell. ‘What you waitin’ for?’ my mother would say to her. Finally, she told them she did want to get married someday, but no one was interested. We didn’t have the community of close friends like other Greeks here did because our relatives were all in Canada. But my brothers were all out in the world, so our father asked them to help Sophie find a husband.

  “Peter worked with a cousin of Joe Papodopolous and evidently, Joe used to hang out with this group of men when they played poker. Pete came to my dad and told him about Joe and we could hear our mother screaming, “A poker friend? You can’t find anyone better?” She had no idea about the family that Joe Papodopolous came from. You know, the money. Anyway, evidently it was love at first sight.

  “The families wanted to meet, so Peter invited Joe’s to Greektown and they got Sophie to attend. I remember the first time I had a little bit o’ shame about our humble store; Joe’s parents were probably expecting one of the big, fancy restaurants and not our little deli. They couldn’t hide their shock. But the meal was delicious, and Joe couldn’t keep his eyes off Sophie. She was good looking in her youth!”

  “Papa! Aunt Sophie is still pretty! Boy, oh boy. Andy, if we ever needed to bribe my dad for anything, I think we got the ammo tonight,” Jill said. “So you’re telling us Uncle Joe and Aunt Sophie have an arranged marriage. It seems to have worked out pretty well for them, I must say.” From Jill’s perspective, theirs looked like the ideal marriage. Sophie came to family

  get-togethers alone since the children had grown up. She and Uncle Joe weren’t connected by the hip like so many other couples. Of course, she needed to hear Sophie’s side of the story some day.

  Chapter 7

  Sophie Zannos Papodopolous lived in a cocoon for so long that she’d forgotten what her original expectations were for marriage. She saw her brothers and their wives interacting and doing things together, going shopping or planning a garden or having friends over for cards. She tried to remember how long it was after her honeymoon before she gave up hope. Stubbornness ran in the family though, so if Joe thought he would be able to ignore her and use her like a maid or a baby machine without her picking a fight, he was wrong. It wasn’t until after their first baby was born that Sophie accepted that her marriage was over. Trying to engage her husband just wasn’t worth the humiliation. He’d be away on a business trip and Sophie would spend hours preparing for his homecoming: primping, getting the house in perfect order, and cooking a favorite meal and he’d ignore her once he got home. She’d be lucky if he kissed her on the cheek. After the children were born, it got worse. He’d be gone for six weeks at a time and wouldn’t call her or email. The first time it happened, she was so worried after days of unanswered voice mail messages and emails to him she called his secretary. It would
be the last time she would try to track him down. The phone rang and she ran to pick it up.

  “Did you really call my office?” It was Joe. No hello or is everything okay? And he was pissed.

  “Yes, I did. You’ve been gone for three days I didn’t know if you were dead or alive, Joe. What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Don’t do it again. I’m on business; you knew I was going away. We don’t need to talk every day. I’m hanging up now.” The line was dead. Sophie looked at the phone in her hand incredulous. What if she had gotten sick, or died? Or worse, what if one of the kids got sick? Anger set in. She got her children settled for the night and started to pace. She was up until early morning, determined she would have it out with him when he got home.

  The next morning, she got the children up and off to school and came home to the empty house with hopes he would call her. When noon came and he hadn’t gotten in touch yet, she called him again, and every half hour after that. At first, she left messages. “Joe, I can’t live like this.” And, “Please, please tell me what’s wrong.” After a while, she simply hung up when his voicemail picked up. The next day she couldn’t eat, crying off and on all day, looking at the phone and finding the strength not to pick it up. Finally, by the weekend, she wasn’t even thinking of him. She was sure she didn’t love Joe, but felt trapped there; they had three kids together. Wouldn’t it be easier to stay and make a life for her children? What would it cost her?

  To her family and friends she pretended nothing was wrong, that she was in a loving marriage, happy and satisfied. Soon, she believed it herself. Everything was okay between them, he was successful because she kept the home fires burning for him and never made any demands. When he came home, he occasionally reached for her for sex, and she complied because she needed it. It wasn’t great, but it was better than doing it alone.

  Her family didn’t suspect she was miserable. She’d hated the apartment above the store in Greektown since childhood, so her visits were infrequent and brief. She’d bring her children to see their grandparents, and after they died, only when summoned for a holiday, wedding or funeral. Her brothers’ wives were a bunch of self-centered gossips and she avoided them whenever possible. Her behavior was chalked up to a busy life with a successful husband and three fabulous children. She would perpetuate the myth for as long as she could.