Let Me Explain You

  You know the story of your birth, I have told it to you many times, how you were only three pounds. But you cannot know that I hold you in my hand, very new, very small. Like a paper clip, the way your body came folded up. Your leg was the same size as my thumb. Which it is big for a thumb, not for a leg, no. For a leg, it says, This child will not survive. But you do. Like your father, you live to survive.

  There is so much more for me to explain you. But we don’t have all the time in the world anymore. You look for Your Father on the ground as a seed, but he will be in the sky as a tree.

  Stavroula, like your father, you make your own path in a way that maybe others cannot. Ruby, your sister, cannot go out so far on her own. Litza, your sister, goes out so much that she is like one of those planets you cannot even see with your naked eye. You ask, always, Why is the father so hard on Stavroula? But what is hardship when it makes us who we are?

  Some things, Stavroula, I should never say.

  Remember me, Stavroula. For yes, my pride. But also for you, because Stavroula is deserving of a past as much as anyone. The only thing I am asking, yes, I dare to ask, is How can you bury me? And help your sisters and your mother and all of the people who love and refuse Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, to bury him? I am asking, How can I be present, future, but especially past, as you are my present, my future, and especially my past?

  It is no little burden to carry your father to the end of his day, because it also means carrying him to the end of yours. And in this, I cannot walk with you.

  But I can tell you what to do. And, for once in your life: listen.

  Here is my last last request:

  Gather everybody here, Sunday at 12:00. Tell them, Take this, It is my father’s daily special. It is very good. Give them wine and tell them, Take this, it is my father’s sweat. It is all he has built of his life. Say to them, Eat with me, and you eat with my father/

  That was it. The cursor blinked on father, as if waiting for him to finish. She scanned the letter once more. His last, last request. Something told her there would be another letter tomorrow, and another one after that, and she would wake up to letters for the rest of her life. Requests she had not fulfilled. His Oldest, his First, the one he should have abandoned at birth. Her head was fizzy with the sweater’s stale smoke. It was too much. She covered her face, and began to take deep, gulping, smothered breaths. She wanted to escape into the cold air.

  And in this, I cannot walk with you. But wasn’t she always on her own?

  Stavroula sat a minute, two minutes. She listened to the pappas and Marina still arguing. She thought about Litza. What would Litza do with this plea? Say to them, Eat with me, and you eat with my father.

  She adjusted the sweater so that it covered more of her. Her chest relaxed. Her throat was sore with the residual smoke.

  She opened a new file. She typed:

  IN MEMORIAM,

  PLEASE JOIN FAMILY AND FRIENDS IN CELEBRATION OF

  THE LIFE OF STAVROS STAVROS MAVRAKIS.

  SUNDAY, THE GALA DINER II

  THE MAVRAKIS FAMILY

  She printed the invitations on glossy paper that she found in a drawer. She cut them to size, arranged them in a stack. She would give them to the hostess, and the hostess would fasten them to the cover of the menus. The memorial would be tomorrow, and the right people would come. She pocketed one for herself. She exited the office, wearing the sweater.

  Marina said, jovially, “Don’t feel too sorry for the pappas. Tonight is the longest we have ever gone without a fight.”

  Then her face dropped.

  Stavroula turned around, and there was Ruby. She was in the kitchen, where she had not been in years and years. Litza was standing with her, almost holding Ruby up with her arm—Litza, who had come back.

  Ruby, her face bruised with worry, said, “Stevie, is he gone?”

  Our father had three daughters. The first, as dear as gold. The second, as dear as wood. The third, as dear as salt. The daughter as dear as gold, he addressed from a golden throne. The daughter as dear as wood, he summoned from his wooden throne. The daughter as dear as salt, he looked down on her from his pillar of salt. He sent them each letters that they had to crack open with a spoon, as these letters were made of eggshells and could not be sealed once they had been read. The letters required the daughters’ attendance and told them each about themselves.

  “But Father, why am I as dear as gold?” the first daughter asked. She wanted to know, because she did not believe him, because Our father was often unable to say what he was actually thinking and instead tried to make his heart feel what his words announced.

  “Because, Daughter, you are of great worth to me.” He showed her his many rings and amulets, the golden throne, the cloth that had been woven golden hair by golden hair, the studded crown that proved how far he’d come. “You see how much I like gold.”

  She said, “Is that all?”

  “You are as dear as gold,” he told his daughter, “because you stay in places deep and dark, as warm as a skull, until the sun transforms you into precious metal.”

  The daughter as dear as gold was satisfied.

  The second daughter came and had to raise her head high, for Our father’s throne was in the canopy of a tree. It was hard to hear him, and the words took their time traveling down the trunk and over the chirping of squirrels and the plunkings of woodpeckers. She waited to hear why she had been summoned and then dismissed and then summoned. She asked Our father why she was as dear to him as wood.

  “Better to burn you with,” he said, but this was a joke. What he said after many laughs, which he shared with the woodland creatures, was, “You are as dear as wood, because wood can build a house or make a fire or hang a hat or succumb to paper.”

  “Is that all?”

  He chose not to tell her other indelible truths about wood. He said, instead, “You can burn wood and turn it into something new.”

  “Is that all?”

  Our father took his time answering, and by now the second daughter was used to this. She could wait a long time for his answer that might never come, or it might tell her more of the same, which was that to matter, she had to be consumed. What she heard was, “Wood breathes, even after death.”

  She left with this power, which was a self-knowing, and a hunger for chopping down trees and milling them into paper.

  The third daughter approached her father from a distance and found that she could not tell where the throne of salt began. It was a pillar, yes, but it spread finely over the floor. She felt the grains beneath her bare feet. The slightest disturbance caused an avalanche. Each breath, the salt was burying her feet. Someone eavesdropping sneezed, and the salt sprayed over her ankles.

  “I will deliver a riddle,” Our father said to this one, the salt reaching her calves. “What is essential in small quantities but deadly to animals and plants in excess? So harmful it can leave you with muscle cramps, dizziness, death, even electrolyte disturbance?”

  “Salt,” the daughter as dear as salt answered. The salt coming now to her knees.

  “No,” he corrected, “daughters.” She attempted a step back, but he required that she come forward, as did the salt. It sunk her thighs.

  “Salt is money,” the daughter as dear as salt answered. “Salt is blood. Salt is water.” Her voice caused a dramatic avalanche. Her waist disappeared beneath the white mountain. “Salt is work and salt is sweat. Salt is making home and leaving home.” Her chest, her shoulders. “Salt is yesterday and tomorrow. Salt is point-oh-four percent of the body’s weight at a concentration equal to that of seawater.” Up to her neck in salt, but at least she and Our father were now eye to eye.

  “Is that all?” the father asked, and the salt rose to her chin.

  “You cannot escape salt, just as you cannot escape me.”

  “Just as you cannot escape me,” he said, and the throne of salt buried the daughter as dear as salt.

  CHAPTER 23

  * * * />
  The pappas himself takes hot chocolate to the three beautiful girls. He carries the mugs one by one, because he is half blind and the eczema worm has eaten his hands. No matter how many prescriptions she sends, he prefers myrrh and eucalyptus. In the booth, the girls are obedient. They accept the mugs because he asks them to. In booths, all children of all ages wait to be told where to go next; even Marina. Pappas, if you call, I will come to your table, and I will take some chocolate to drink, too. But, no, the pappas is not her father right now. The pappas is a consoler, and he is a meanderer, and he is a poet, and he is a priest, and he is a bird tracking the crumbs to the missing Stavros.

  Marina feels very unwise tonight. Her heart is a king with many heads and tigers, and she cannot trust it. Tomorrow is the conclusion for Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, her friend and business partner. Tomorrow ends the story that Stavros began in nonsense letters to his family. Impossibly, tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and tomorrow morning is the scheduled Memorial of Stavros Stavros Mavrakis. This gathering of the girls tonight, this koinonia, it has nothing to do with the father. This is their wish, not his, even if he would wish it, too. This was not in your plans, Stavro, but here they are, anyhow. They make their own way. Tonight the girls have their own kind of memorial, which is in one way more a communion about being sisters than daughters.

  Her Stavroula is so brave. All night, she has been answering her father’s last final letter. Stavroula has been inviting customers and employees to come tomorrow to pay their respects. She has been taking care of food and seating arrangements. Now Stavroula is making the table into a triangle that points back to her as the head, so that her sisters will know she has the eyes to see them through this difficult period, and whatever difficulty follows. She is as brave as she was when she first entered this country. Marina remembers, Marina was there to bathe her, because Marina spoke Greek; and after she bathed her, she rubbed olive oil on little Stavroula’s bare koulo. Why? Stavroula asked. Because oil is the fertilizer that helps you grow, Marina said. After a breakfast of warm rice pudding, she sweetened a teaspoon of oil with honey and brought it to Stavroula’s lips. Why? Stavroula asked. Because you think not in thoughts, but in bubbles of oil. Why? Stavroula insisted. Because it is oil that makes your tongue as slippery as it is, and Marina caught her tongue between her greased fingers.

  Marina, knowing it is both a right and a flaw within herself, cannot help but hold disappointment in her heart for her dear Stavroula. Stavroula senses this, and that pains Marina. Who could believe that Stavros Stavros’s letter would speak truth? Marina knows now that he is right about Stavroula, that Stavroula desires things no woman is entitled to—a kind of happiness that should disgust Marina, but mostly it saddens her. Stavroula, a horse that refuses to break, even if domesticity would make life easy. After too many years, even Marina, whom no one could break, had finally broken. Not Stavroula. Her daring Stavroula, this much in her she can admire.

  Stavroula meets her eye; Marina taps middle finger to thumb three, four times. A kind of quiet clapping that says, I love you. I see you. Stavroula smiles, turns back to her sisters.

  Now the pappas is telling a joke. It is either about the goat girl, the snake tree, or he is trying to have them guess at what is the quickest thing on earth. Somehow, the joke becomes a joke about their father. It is Ruby who laughs the easiest. Stavroula, like Marina, laughs with her mouth open. Litza laughs only when Marina catches her not laughing. Of them all, Marina knows, she is the one feeling the hole of her father’s absence—because it is a larger version of the hole she feels at all times.

  Litza sits across from the pappas and the sisters, alone. If Marina were asked to join them, she would sit on Litza’s side.

  Yes, Marina loves Stavroula, but today maybe even more Litza, because Litza so much needs love. Is broken over it. And Marina, in her own way, can give it from afar though she knows that will never be enough for Litza. As well as, Marina sees some of herself in Litza. They two are the kind of rock that continues to appear in your yard after you sweep it away, more weed than mineral. The kind of rock that has always been in Marina’s throat, and, yes, Litza’s throat as well, because they both insisted on relying on themselves at such an early age. Marina knows Litza’s pain; Marina knows Litza must rise above the pain, as Stavroula has learned to do. Must chew on the rock. Women like them chew on rocks all their entire lives. Which is why Marina cannot offer Litza leniency, but she can offer love, from afar.

  The pappas says something that Marina, wrapping pastry at the counter, cannot hear. All three girls blow diligently into their cups. Marina knows this trick: it is the sailboat. Whoever blows the sailboat fastest—the pappas says to all the children in the village—wins the race. Marina knows there is no sailboat. That does not stop us, Pappas. That makes us try harder.

  The mother will come soon, and then Marina can call the pappas back from the family. Marina can say, Come away, let them think in peace with their confusion, once Carol arrives. Until then, Marina takes care of the bakery case. Marina uses plastic wrapping for the pastries and does not get too involved in the condolensing that is happening at the table.

  Marina does not know if Stavros Stavros will die or will he live. Marina is not someone who can see into the future. Marina trusts that what must happen will happen, just like the hen under the knife bends her neck to what’s to come.

  So Marina tells herself. But Marina does not trust Stavros Stavros or his brain, thick as cow tongue these days, or his disappearance.

  Stavros Stavros is the kind of man who will arrange his own funeral and not die, but he is also the kind of man to arrange his funeral and then go ahead and die.

  What will happen to the three beautiful girls? Ruby, who does not yet know how to read the world, and maybe never will, or could it be that she is fortunate enough that the world will more properly read her? Stavroula and Litza, think how far apart they already are, one an ocean liner, one a satellite. Marina loves them both, dearly, as if she thought up the idea of them. Marina understands that Stavroula and Litza—and you, too, Stavro, and you, too, Dina, and you, too, Marina, and you, too—belong to a race of people who must carry everything they own in their mouths. All of their luggage, they squeeze into their mouth. You can only fit so much of the old place, Marina, or so many words, or so many exaggerations, or so many stories, or so many people, or so much soup before you must spit and take a breath; and then a very different world fills you up. It is not unwelcome, it is just reinvention. This is immigration, even so many years later.

  Marina wraps the pastry with three easy folds. Plastic on plastic on plastic, so that it is no longer clear, it is cloudy. The pappas calls for a round of milk shakes, the girls not quite through with their hot chocolates. Every flavor, he says to the waitress. It is a reason for everyone in the diner, even her, to love him.

  The beautiful girls do not understand their father. They don’t know what a stubborn man he can be; for years, stubborn enough to resist all the forces ripping his family apart and then stubborn enough to rip it apart himself. Marina watched without giving advice or getting involved. She told herself that he would have cracked her advice against the side of a rock. Marina, without children, without family, without any troubles besides the ones that get stirred up in pots. What does she know?

  That is not true, Marina, and you know it.

  All those years, Marina’s greatest sin, talking too much and saying nothing. Yes, Marina, you had your say for how to fillet the flounder, and you had your say in keeping vultures out of your kitchen, but what did that matter? What life did that change? Your pappas, who has never met these children before, is offering the easiest word of all—silence. He kisses them all on the forehead, his face grazing theirs like a sheep’s. Marina’s heart breaks, and also she feels relief when the beautiful girls seem consoled. What she has failed to do for so long, the pappas has done in minutes.

  Now, Marina is brave enough to say what she could not say for years. A prayer
in the diner is as good as a prayer anywhere:

  Father, take care of the girls.

  The milk shakes come. The pappas fashions farm animals out of the straw wrappers and makes them walk.

  When he begins to sing, too low for many people to hear, Marina cannot go on with her prayer. She cannot go on with her work. She watches and listens. The song tells about an apricot tree and a shepherd who falls asleep only to wake up and realize that his flock never left him, they are just on the other side of the mountain with the girl from his dreams. It is when he sings the refrain, “The girl of his dreams,” that the pappas looks up at Marina, his eyes glossy. It is when he sings “I could see you for the apricot trees,” that he beckons her.

  Marina is the little girl holding her milk jug. Nothing lost but the bottom. And instead of scolding her for the spilled milk, he laughs; she makes him laugh.

  From behind the counter, Marina joins her pappas beneath the apricot tree.

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  Dear Dad.

  Are you in hell?

  Are you in heaven?

  Are you in hell?

  Hell was one clean plate, one fork in the drain board, two mugs on the counter. Hell was three in the morning, Dina at the stove in a green robe, supervising a kettle. She was digging the crescent of her thumbnail into an eyetooth, sleepy but not irritated. If she had seen Litza from her window the day that Litza followed her father here, she said nothing about it.

  Dina did not complain about Litza’s banging on the shuddery glass window, and she had not been nasty about being pulled from the couch, though it would have been better if she had. Instead, she said, “I knew you’d come. A mother senses when her girls have unfinished business.” She was forever saying shit like this anytime Litza gave her the chance—things that exonerated her by insinuating that she could mother from a distance, that she could be forgiven, when a) she was not exonerated; b) she was not mothering; c) this was not distance enough; d) even now, Dina mistakenly believed in redemption.