Let Me Explain You

  Then the pappas’s daughter walked through the door. He did not see her, he was too busy scraping black gunk off of the grill. He said without looking, “No more Trucker Special today, we are finished,” because the only thing he could serve right now was coleslaw, bought in buckets and scooped out soupy. The men who came to the Gala were crazy about their cabbage and mayonnaise.

  “You refer to all women as karagogeas, or just the ones who’ve seen you with your pants down?”

  The Greek made him snap his head up, and then he realized who it was. Marina, with her shoulders and plank neck and runaway mouth. Marina, with her eyes and words full of sand, no matter what anyone has to say about it. Marina, more καррαγωγέας than any woman he had ever met, except maybe his wife. Marina, who had been watching from the wire fence the day his brothers burned off his peos. In public, Stavros had called her keftedaki like everyone else—Marina Meatball—the only villager with a worse nickname than his. She did not help things, chewing on garlic during recess, or so people said, so that none of the children talked to her. Except Stavros did, sometimes, when his brothers weren’t looking. He and Marina threw olive pits to see whose would land farther; each time, they both insisted their own.

  All that shared history turning up in this country made him yelp. He came around the counter.

  She put down a suitcase the size of a grocery bag, and they hugged. She said, “You would think in a country this big, it would be difficult to locate a Greek. But talk to a Greek, and he will get you your Greek.”

  He said, “Sit, sit.” He was overjoyed to see someone from home. He had seen his family recently, yes, but having a guest from home in his establishment, it thrilled him. It made him remember he was a person with dreams that people were watching from afar.

  She sat. She took off the scarf tied around her neck. She looked around, said, “They said you were starting out on your own, just like an American.”

  He had told his mother about the new business. It came across as much bigger than this saltshaker. But to Marina, he said, “This is how it works here. You start small, prove yourself big. Smart, if you think about it.”

  “If that’s how they do it here.”

  He jumped up and began to make her coffee. He was a little shy because it had been a long time. She had gone to live with her father’s sister when they were teenagers, because her aunt had three sets of twins and needed help cooking. She did not move back to the village until after Stavros left for America.

  Marina accepted the mug from him with a thankful “Beautiful.” She said, “You have some pastry for this?”

  He hadn’t. They weren’t on the menu yet, because he had no time for phyllo dough. He said, “Baker comes in the morning,” which he didn’t. He said, “How long do you stay?”

  “As long as it takes to make a life.” She took a sip, and a pleat of pleasure softened her face. He recalled this pleasure—a cup of kafe after being in transit for two days. It felt good to give that to her. Him doing something useful for a compatriot in need. He would not charge her. He said, “You are visiting someone?”

  “No.”

  “Ela, your father isn’t here, is he?” He tipped his head to look out at the parking lot, but of course there was no real window for him to see through.

  “He is not.”

  “How is he? Your father.”

  “The same. Running other people’s lives.”

  In English, Stavros said, “You must call him. He will be waiting to know if you are safe.”

  In English, she cut back. “I didn’t fly a hundred thousand miles from my father just to get a new one, Stavro.”

  Gamoto, her English was better.

  Stavros sat back. He looked again at her suitcase. He had seen dogs bigger than this suitcase. It told him that she could not be planning to stay, but the look on her face, the way she was settled in the chair but also unable to settle into the chair, told him, yes, she was an immigrant. Yes, she had a time line that offered no comfort, because it offered no return ticket. And she was clearly alone. Probably, she had taken a bus directly here from the airport. Possibly, she had nowhere else to go and had actually gotten this address from his mother or some other onlooker. A glimmer of a plan worked its way into his eye—he could bring his girls back for Marina to watch, and in exchange he could give her a place to live. He could stop thinking about the things that were out of his control and get this place running, even if it ran miserably, no better than his father’s wagon.

  He said, “Do you have a place for the night?”

  Marina returned the mug to its saucer. “My aunt’s friend is renting me a place.”

  “Are you looking for work? The best money is in child care.”

  Marina guffawed. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not here to raise your girls, Stavro. I’m here to cook for you so you can run this mousetrap.”

  “Cook for me?”

  Marina stood. “Nai. I’m going to make you a meal you believe in, and you’re going to hire me to operate your kitchen.”

  Stavros could not protest when she pushed her way through to the counter, because anything that would have stopped her would have been too hard for him to say. No, Marina, I can’t hire you because I have no money. No, Marina, because in just a few days this failing business will close up its one room and turn back to salt. No, Marina, because I have been cooking food that tastes like sponge and you won’t do any better than me because America is lousy at growing anything meant to be eaten. No, Marina, because the ingredients you are going to find are scraped to the bottom of the jar and it is impossible to make even a single good meal from the snakeskin options of my kitchen.

  Ela, she was so dumpy in his diner, the keftedaki. It was depressing him.

  Marina was back there with her fat elbows in his refrigerator. Marina was making a quick pile of food too insignificant even in weight to count as a meal. He spotted a fourth of an onion, a tomato, a diamond of animal fat, a leftover bone that she was roasting in the one-foot-wide oven for almost fifteen minutes now. Then she toasted a stale piece of bread. She whisked together a soft lemon, the last drips of olive oil, some kind of green herb that she picked out of the garden of her pocket, and she poured it all over the marrow that she scooped from the bone. Everything went on the toast. On the side, an onion marmalade, plus a squash he had thrown out, which she skinned and revived.

  She said, “Eat.” She would not sit until he broke off a piece of the bread.

  He put it in his mouth and chewed. The bread, crispy. The marrow, like the best parts of a leftover stew. Salty and congealed. Like he was getting to dunk his bread in his mother’s pot while the whole house was sleeping, like the flavor could make him drunk if it got loose. Only, it was too salty. He wanted to ask where, where did this come from. He said, “Ela, it’s nice. But I don’t know if anyone could believe in it.”

  Marina broke off a piece of the bread, tasted. She chewed. “Maybe your head doesn’t want to believe in it, but your mouth is already converting your stomach.”

  “Americans don’t eat like this, Marina. When you get into the business like I have, you will realize that.”

  “You and I will show them how to eat.”

  He ate more, not too fast, not giving her the wrong idea. But he was starving, and it was nice, the nicest thing since Hero’s galaktoboureko. It was wonderful to be given a meal by a woman who knew how to make meat out of bones. His mother had been like that. Something he wished he had appreciated as a young man.

  Marina said, “You are no fool, Stavro, or else Marina would not be here. I know you—if you have any sense, it’s business sense.”

  She was buttering him up like a fat leg of lamb, and he was enjoying it more than the marrow. “OK, one good meal. But how do I know you have the training to excel my business?”

  Marina uncrossed her arms from her safe of a chest. She broke off another piece of toast. She chewed the way a man chews, the way a priest chews: everyone could wait until she
had formulated her thought. And it was this: “Stavro, while you were here making babies and trouble for yourself, I was with my aunt in Crete. Making breakfast out of trees and lunch out of nests and dinner out of smoke. You learned some things, I learned some things. I can do this for us.”

  “Don’t pretend this is for me. You’re trying to get fat on the riches.” He could talk to her like this, so far from the pappas. If she wanted to be in America, she would have to get used to hostility, even from other Greeks. Especially from other Greeks. If she wanted to work, she had to prove she could handle it, move up the greasy ladder like he had.

  “Marina wastes nothing. Every part of a goat, every leaf of a vegetable. It all gets made into money.”

  He could tell she was not lying. Or lying like a Greek lies, which is exaggeration, which is not lying at all, really. Marina took the last toast and caught him looking at it. She pulled it apart, a piece so small it would not have given hope to a mouse, and gave half to him.

  It was the wrong thing to do. All he could think was, She sees how I am desperate.

  “I will be in at six in the morning tomorrow. You will come in at eight. You make a big, fat sign to call in your truckers. I will cook them a meal that leaves them hungrier. You don’t pay me until that toy register of yours hits four hundred. At four hundred dollars, we buy ingredients, and we split what’s left. We make this place more than what it is.”

  He heard what she was saying, and shame filled the empty cup of his life. This village woman, this spectator, was telling him that without her he had nowhere to go but further down. Nothing could have made him angrier, except the ugly face of his wife saying it. He wanted to make Marina leave, even as he was already missing the promising children and grandchildren of the meal he had just eaten, even as he wanted to weep, You’ve come too late. I would, but it is just too late.

  “I am not giving you a job. Go wash dishes, if you want to be in the business.”

  Marina pushed the saucer toward him. “You men, always thinking there is room for your phallos in the profits. Stavro, take it out of the discussion.”

  That was it. He picked up her suitcase, put it out the door. It was bad manners to keep a Greek from finishing his coffee, so Stavros picked up the mug, too, and he left it at the doorstep. She watched him lock her out. He was alone again in the darkness of the restaurant, trying to take a breath. He could at least have called her a cab. But he was not going to do favors for anyone who came to his establishment to tell him he was a failure.

  He picked up the plate and brought it to his nose. It was commanding him to put its final morsels to his lips, where they melted in seconds. The remaining juices he scooped up with the only thing left on the counter—a citrusy rind—and he sucked it until it was like papers in his mouth.

  The next morning, Marina was in his kitchen. She had arrived much earlier than six, with foodstuffs from who knew where, orders lined up from who knew who. Bacon and eggs for the salesmen? Pancakes with berries the size of bumblebees for the steelworkers? Lunch boxes for the truckers, so they could get two for the price of two? Yes, customers were today’s special on Marina’s menu. More customers than he had ever faced alone. Most of all, the place was clean. All the salt in the crevices, all the thick salty paste coating the burners and the boards and the counters, it had been wiped clean. She had scrubbed it all away, she had kept it out of the cooking—something that in his overworked, alienated state, he had never been able to manage.

  “How did you get in?”

  “Front door.”

  Vlaka, he knew how she got in—that lock was more a suggestion than a law, as was, apparently, his refusal to hire her. But they were so busy, such a rush, how could he dismiss her? Look at the amount of lunch boxes that were going out. (Lunch boxes? He had never made such a thing.) Look at the amount of people coming to sit in his salt shed, knowing Marina by name, waiting for an empty seat to flash its big welcome smile. One man, a trucker who stopped by on Fridays, said, “This must be why all the foreigners keep their wives in the kitchen.”

  “He’s not my husband,” Marina said, waving her spatula. “I don’t marry ugly men if they aren’t American citizens.”

  The truckers liked that one.

  Stavros was not used to this, someone being commanding and irreverent in his business. He saw that the truckers liked the way Marina pushed around the place, and he privately decided that tomorrow—Marina or no Marina—he would make jokes with the men, too.

  Stavros put out menus and glasses of water. To keep from losing business he turned an unfixed cabinet on its side and made it into a third table. He grabbed his keys to buy more eggs, which were always running out by this time, only to find that Marina had three extra cartons in a refrigerator behind the building. (The refrigerator, who knew where that came from.) He took off his jaketa. By ten thirty, he realized his waiter/host/busboy wasn’t coming in. This employee had never even been two minutes late. Stavros had made sure of it, telling him he’d lose not only this job, but the one at Hero’s, too.

  “I sent him home. All he was good for was being in the way.”

  “But he’s my server.”

  “Actually, you’re your server,” Marina said. “And now, one less mouth to pay.”

  By lunch, Stavros told himself. By lunch, she will be gone. But lunch was busier than breakfast, and dinner was busier than lunch. This was because the men who had come at 6:00 a.m. had told their buddies to come at twelve, and those buddies had recommended the evening shift at seven. It wasn’t the bite-wait-bite that Stavros was used to. At the end of the night, Stavros opened the till. Six hundred and thirty dollars. Seven times what yesterday was worth. But now there were two of them, and he would have to split the profits. He would never have agreed to fifty percent, but look what she had brought in. A business. He would get her down to twenty percent, plus maybe some days off, his mentorship.

  Marina was cleaning grease off of the stovetop. Her hair was wet against her head. “Come have some stew,” she said, “the tomorrow special.”

  He sat down with her at the cabinet table. She scooped out a pailful, and he started eating even before she got him a spoon. Neither of them had taken a break all day, not even a white cracker in their mouths.

  “Good day,” she said. She was eating with her mouth open, too, she was just as unworried about being polite. This was kitchen, not dining etiquette. This was eating as hungry equals.

  He nodded. “Better than average.”

  From her pocket, she pulled out a crinkled paper. “Here is a receipt for the food,” she said. “I will take my half of what’s left.”

  He kept eating. He used his collar to wipe his mouth. “Marina, I wouldn’t give my own father fifty percent.”

  She kept eating, too. “I wouldn’t give that to my father, either.”

  “You think I can afford any villager that knocks on my door?”

  “I’m no villager.”

  The stew kept opening and shutting drawers for him, like he was searching for something and finding it, then looking again, rummaging not with his hands but with his tongue. He figured out, finally, what it was. A blanket his grandmother had made out of rabbit. That was what Marina had added to the stew. The knowledge of that blanket, as if it still existed.

  Still, this was about money. He had children. “Two hundred for food leaves two hundred for you, two hundred for me. Why would I open a business just to pay my staff the same amount that I make as boss?”

  “Partners, not staff.”

  “Staff, not partners.” He pushed away the bowl. But he was too hungry, too eager to pull the blanket back up, and he returned the spoon to his mouth. “I have to start my life, Marina. I have to get going. I can’t be kept down fifty percent of the time.”

  “This is your life: you are having a life. This counts. And six hundred dollars is a nice shove forward, considering yesterday you pulled in eighty-three dollars.”

  How did she know?

  Marin
a leaned in. She took his hands in her own damp ones, something that surprised him, something she would have never done before today, and suddenly their acquaintanceship was more like roots. Suddenly their shared meal was a shared meal.

  She said, “I know what kind of problems you’re having with the Galaktoboureko. No one else knows, and no one needs to know. But I am telling you, Stavro, we can fix it. Marina does not make promises that go teethless. Marina’s words leave marks.”

  He closed his mouth. Still, it quivered.

  “Six hundred is just day one. Day two, it will be eight hundred. Day seven hundred, it will be eight thousand.”

  How was she giving at exactly the same moment that she was taking? How was this, again, the place where he found himself to be with the woman in his life? Still, he nodded. The nod was made of bone, but it was an agreement.

  “OK, you get a big chunk of the profit. I will give you that. But the business is mine. The business is always mine.”

  Marina sat back. She patted the top of his hand.

  Stavros let his spoon sink into the stew and crushed his face into his hands. Always, one step up, one step back. Everyone in his life, letting him keep his arms so that they could turn around and steal the legs. Taking away sons to give him daughters. Taking away even daughters. He could not help it, he began to weep.

  Marina was quiet. To keep them from embarrassment, she continued to eat. She said, “You will bring them home, Stavro. It will not be the last thing you do.”

  For the first time, he felt he could speak the pressure out loud. “Every month, I think I am one month closer.”

  “That’s exactly what you are. Because if it’s one thing I know about Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, it’s that he was born a stubborn Greek who gets what he wants.”

  “Stubborn? You calling me stubborn?”

  “Like my father and my father’s mule and my mule’s father.”

  Stavros’s face slipped, and he laughed behind his hands. “Good thing it takes two stubborn Greeks to run a diner.”