by Cat Mann
****
Ari and I spent our morning hanging out together at home. We sat on the porch with the newspaper and looked out at the crashing waves.
“Hey,” I said as a thought popped in my head. “What on Earth does 'piase kokkino' mean and when did your mom become such a nut?”
“She’s always been a nut and as for 'piase kokkino,' why do you ask?” Ari shifted in his seat to face me.
“Well, yesterday your mom and I both said some something at the same time and she freaked out on me. I had to leave the kitchen before she started to do that weird spitting thing you guys all do.”
“It means 'touch red'.”
“Yeah, that’s what she said.”
“Well… did you touch red?”
“No, I refuse to fall victim to her silly superstitions.”
“Dammit, Ava!” Ari laughed, “You just sealed your fate with my mother. I’m sure there will be hell to pay between the two of you and I am going to get stuck in the middle of some dumb fight of yours.”
“You can’t possibly believe in that bull. Last year when I said that spitting ‘ftou, ftou, ftou’ thing they do is silly, you agreed with me.”
“Well, for starters, I really liked you and I would have agreed with anything you said – and spitting is silly, but I still believe in it, that it wards off evil spirits.”
I leaned across Ari and gently placed my finger on his full red lips. “Piase kokkino. There, all better.”
He kissed my fingertip. “It’s too late now, Ava.”
“What other things, superstitions, do you believe in?”
“You really want to know?” His eyebrow arched.
I laughed, “I feel as though I am left with no choice; I will be doomed if I never learn these oddities.”
“Ok … Well, you know that cactus over there by the door?”
Ari pointed to a round cactus in a big blue pot that sat perched by our backdoor. “My parents have one, too and so do Gianna and Thais. A cactus is supposed to ward off the evil eye from a home.”
“What is the evil eye?” I said the words with a fake, spooky, ghost-like tone.
Ari tsked, sounding exactly like his mother. “Matiasma – a Greek word for the belief that a compliment can be backhanded, showing jealousy, and that such a compliment is intended to make someone feel bad or be devastated. Greeks go out of their way to avoid the evil eye. Some wear blue charms around their neck and even hang ropes of garlic above doorways. My mom keeps that rope of garlic over her stove to keep her cooking safe from the evil eye. She thinks people are jealous of her culinary skills.”
I smiled a great big silly smile. “How do you know all of this stuff?”
Ari scoffed, “I had to endure Greek School for nine years before DPI and I had the information beat into me on a daily basis.”
“Will you tell me more?” As ludicrous as the beliefs sounded, I enjoyed hearing about them. Even more so, I loved to see Ari’s passion for his heritage.
“Of course I will. Crows … ” Ari pointed to a bird flying away in the distance. “Seeing a crow is considered an omen of bad news, misfortune or death. If you hear a crow cawing, you say ‘Sto kalo … sto kalo … kala nea na me feris.’ By doing so you are telling the crow to fly away and bring back good news.”
“What is that thing your mom always does with her bread knife?” I asked.
“That's an important one. Knives … you never ever hand someone a knife. Every evening my mom sets the bread knife down on the table in front of my dad; he picks the knife back up off the table and slices the bread. If she were to hand the knife directly to him, she would be giving him her unspoken permission to stab her in the back or do her harm. And bread … we have bread at every meal; it is considered a gift from God and should never be thrown away. If the bread becomes too hard to be eaten, we feed it to the birds. Since the food was a gift from God, it would be a sin to put it in the garbage.”
“I like that one.”
“Me too.”
“What else?”
“One more…” Ari glanced down at his watch and then grabbed hold of my shoe and shook my foot playfully. “Shoes … a shoe left out and sitting overturned with the sole facing up is an omen of death. If you take your shoes off and they accidently land upside down, you have to immediately turn them rightside up, say ‘skorda’ and spit on them.”
“So many of the beliefs have to do with death; it seems like a lot of energy wasted on trying to avoid the unavoidable.”
Ari shrugged, “as much as I would love to sit here with you and tell you more about where we come from, we have to go. I promised both my mother and sister we would help out today.”
“Ok. Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“My pleasure,” Ari beamed a smile, “and if you behave yourself with my mom today, I will reward you with our superstition about bat bones.”
I laughed a great big laugh and Ari stood up, took my hand and we walked down the sandy path to his parents' home. We then helped Aggie get ready for Lauren’s little party. Aggie was having a hard time with the fact that Lauren was growing up and she was not looking forward to Lauren moving into the dorms. I have to admit that I was not looking forward to it either. I knew a little something about student behavior, having witnessed it first-hand. Thankfully, Lauren was not placed on the twelfth floor as she had wanted; instead she got stuck on an all-girls floor lower down in the building. I kept telling her an all-girls floor would let her concentrate better on her classes and she kept telling me, “I am just going to go to work for Ari anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Lauren!” I exclaimed. “Believe me; you don’t want to work at baio. Margaux is pure evil and you will want to kill Ari if you have to work for him.”
“That may be true, but I want to do something in fashion and I figure since I already have a brother and a sister-in-law in the industry, you and Ari can help me get my foot in the door.”
“Ari is not doing anything with fashion; that is all Margaux. He is managing her business, not her clothing line. He is just a glorified accountant. Margaux wanted him to take it over so she could concentrate on design; she has been doing both since my grandpa died and is tired of it. As for me, I don’t have anything to do with baio, except wear the clothes Margaux gives me. But if you're serious about fashion, I bet she would let you intern next summer.”
“Yay,” she squeaked.
“Lauren, think long and hard about that; Margaux is a big, nasty pill to swallow and if you don’t have perfect grades she won’t even give you a second glance. She didn’t pick Ari because of me; she picked him because he is brilliant.”
I hoped my words would help Lauren concentrate on school and not boys. She is the most boy-crazy person I have ever met. As a descendant of Aphrodite and Adonis, Lauren is drop-dead gorgeous, a true goddess and I was sure every straight boy in her school had a thing for her. I worried that she would end up making the wrong choices. I think she could tell what I was thinking because as we were packing up her room, she got up and closed the bedroom door.
“Ava,” she asked. “Are you glad you did what you did with Ari? You know, how you waited to be married before you ummm… before you know… you had sex?”
I groaned internally. I am the wrong person for this type of conversation and I wanted to tell Lauren that nothing would make her mother happier than to have this talk, but I sucked it up and put a smile on my face.
“I love Ari. I cannot imagine loving anyone else. I wanted to give him something that no one else in the world could ever have. Waiting until I was married made everything so much more important, more intimate, and more powerful. It brought a very strong and beautiful emotion to the mix. Deciding to wait was a difficult decision but in the end, I would have been disappointed with myself if I had not waited.”
She thought things over for a moment then asked, “Are you disappointed with Ari for not doing the same thing?”
“I am not disappointed in anyt
hing that Ari has ever done. That was his choice and he has had to deal with his decision. Who am I to hold a person’s past against him?” In truth, it did sometimes make me angry and his past certainly did not help with my friendship with Julia but jealously and insecurities aren’t issues I easily 'fess up to.
Lauren’s door swung open and her cheeks flushed bright pink.
“What are you two talking about in here?” Ari took a step into her room.
“The L word,” I answered with a crinkle of my nose.
He turned on his heel, left the room and shut the door behind him.
Lauren giggled and I help her finish packing while the wheels turned in her head about our conversation. Ari and I left as soon as Lauren’s friends from school started to arrive for her party that evening. My nerves could not take all of their little squeals and high-pitched screams.
Ari talked me into getting in the hot tub with him. I had never been in one before, but he knew how to make the experience a lot of fun. In fact, it turned out to be a very fun experience and I was extremely thankful for the fact that our house edged a very private and secluded part of the beach.
“So what was I interrupting earlier between you and Lauren?” he murmured in my ear in between kisses.
I bit my lip and gave him my, ‘I don’t know if I should tell you,’ face.
“C’mon, I’m your husband; you are morally obligated to tell me about any conversations you have with my sister.”
“Uh, she just wanted to know if I was happy with the fact that I had waited until after our wedding to be intimate with you, so I just told her how I felt.”
“And?” he probed.
“Well, of course I’m happy with the decision I made.”
“I know that, Ava; that’s not what I’m asking. What else did she want to know?”
“She just wanted to know if I was disappointed in your decision to not wait.”
His face fell a little.
“Ugh, she knows about me and Julia?”
“She’s not an idiot, Ari. First of all, do you ever listen to the conversations at the dinner table? Your mother practically gave me her blessing to share your bed with you the third time I met her. What mother does that? And besides, Lauren was there when I got in that fight with you last winter after I found out about the sordid details of your relationship with Julia.”
“Right.” he said. “So, are you disappointed in me, Mrs. Alexander?”
Just thinking about Ari and Julia together made me angry and my stomach was assaulted with all kinds of pains. I tried to push the feelings away and continue on with our nice evening alone.
“I guess you could try to make it up to me.”
He pulled me closer to him and it didn’t take long for me to bite down hard on his ear lobe in anticipation and desire.