Let Me Explain You

  “Lamb lacks internal fat,” Stavroula said. “The way you mess it up is to cook it too high too fast. It demands patience.”

  Stavroula said, “My father taught me that.”

  They watched the oven. July took off the green apron. She wore a sleeveless yellow shirt with a low neckline, which Stavroula couldn’t help but think she had put on because she was coming over. There were many bangles around her arm and layers of gold necklaces hanging at her throat. It was a throat like a very pretty glass pitcher that Stavroula, in her childhood, knew not to reach for.

  July brought them glasses of orange juice. The juice was cold, sweet, and sharp. Stavroula drank hers and asked for more.

  Stavroula said, “What was it like when you lost your mom?”

  July, searching for words. “Afterward, you’re a different person.”

  “That feels true already.”

  July nodded. “They’ll find him.”

  Stavroula was no help to the police, because she could not accurately describe her father. Her father’s eyes were brown, but the brown of hazelnut or the brown of liver? His hair was black and streaked with gray, but was it really as short as she said? Was his nickname Steve? Was there actually another nickname that better described him, that he had never been able to share with his children? Only the inoculation scar on his arm, only that was definite in her mind. She could trace it with her finger in the air and make it appear just like that. The same ridges, the same circular outline as a bottle cap. The police would find her father immediately if they could just go around matching the scar in her mind to the scar on his arm.

  She was not going to use the word suicide, not even with July. That wasn’t what happened. One thing was true, it was her father who had taught her about resilience.

  She could not face the thought of him dying alone.

  They sat together at the counter, drinking juice and watching the minutes on the timer. “I’m sorry,” Stavroula said, “about the menu. Sometimes I forget I’m just like him.”

  “Stevie, you’re not like anyone.”

  Stavroula shook her head. “I can’t help what I cook, it just comes to me. I can’t water it down. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.” What came to mind was an expression, handed down by her father—Εφαγα τονκόδμο να δε βρω. I ate the whole world to find you. I’ve been searching everywhere for you.

  July smiled, kindly, but as if maybe she had been embarrassed. Then she reached up and rubbed the edges of Stavroula’s hair where it was shortest. “It’s funny,” she said. “It was like seeing a reflection of yourself, only in food.”

  Stavroula surprised herself by leaning into July’s hand, into the hospitality of it. What was so unexpected, delightful, was that July’s palm opened. Stavroula closed her eyes, and the faint whirring of the oven sounded like it was coming from the touch. July’s hand moved across her hair to just below her earlobe, grazing her neck with a single nail. “You’re good at what you do, Stevie.”

  She was a sucker for flattery. Just like her father. She opened her eyes.

  July took back her hand. “You’re the only zealot I’ve ever been fond of.”

  “I want everyone to see the real you. The one I see.”

  July stood eye to eye with Stavroula, the oven beeping and neither of them moving to check it. “The one you see.”

  Stavroula nodded. Fond was good. Fond was a start.

  July perched her arms on Stavroula’s shoulders, she pulled her close. The hard, cool jewelry, July’s slim neck the smoothness of wax paper, her solid arms. Stavroula was expecting something delicate, like the body of a game hen, and got something even more delicate, a quail. Except for those arms, which both drew her in and kept her out.

  Then the overwhelming feeling: this was kindness. A friend, giving her shelter.

  Tomorrow, she would be on her own. Would have to face her loneliness, once again.

  Would go back to the menu, start from scratch until she got it right.

  Stavroula pulled herself from July, began poaching the eggs.

  Some minutes later, they were dipping crusty bread into the drippings and licking their fingers.

  DAY 1

  * * *

  Denial

  CHAPTER 26

  * * *

  Stavroula pulled up to the diner. It was five in the morning, still dark. Just a few hours before her father’s funeral, which they had all agreed to observe. The wet pavement glowed pink from the Gala’s neon sign. Someone was standing across the street. Stavroula could tell who: Litza, nocturnal as usual. Her arms were crossed, and her hand trembling a cigarette. A blinking amber streetlight lit up only part of her face, as if the darkness were protecting the rest. Litza crossed, leaned into Stavroula’s driver’s-side window. She had been crying and the crying had made her angry—not the other way around.

  Still, Stavroula said, “You want to get in?”

  They sat in the chilly darkness with the windows down, Litza taking puffs of a second cigarette every now and then. Her eyes glassy. “I need coffee.”

  “Know a good diner?”

  This made Litza snort. Then, “Let’s get away from this fucking place.”

  They drove.

  “Nothing’s open.”

  Stavroula stopped in the middle of an empty intersection and reached back for the paper plate covered in tinfoil. Litza picked off some of the lamb. She nodded in appreciation. “You got really good. He taught you right.”

  “Thanks.”

  She lit another cigarette and closed her eyes. “At least one of us learned something.” She meant it, she wasn’t Digging around your palm with a spoon, as their father would say. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t sound bitter.

  They went to the playground where their father had taken them a couple times when they were young. On both occasions, he sat on the bench for fifteen minutes while they played, him all bunched shoulders and coat, smoking a Saratoga. He told them No, push each other on the swings, first one and then the other. It can’t be both at once. The first outing they just sat there waiting, but he never got up. The second time, Stavroula pushed Litza and Litza pushed her back. They never got very high before one had to slide off the seat, take a turn at pushing. Still, they sang eeska deeska bella, and having to get down did not deter them. Their father, he didn’t understand the bastardized Greek rhyme. It was like a secret between the two sisters.

  Litza said, “When I have a daughter, I’m going to take her to the park every day. I’m going to teach her things we never learned. And give her everything we never got.”

  “You want a girl?”

  “It’s not about want. I can feel her pushing to come out. She’s fighting her way to life.”

  Stavroula found herself admiring this. Though Litza would be a terrible mother.

  They drove on. Litza took a drag with her eyes shut.

  Without intending to, Stavroula took them to their father’s first diner. The Gala 0. She slowed but did not park. There was nothing to see. It was not a diner anymore, not even a salt shed. Just paved over. Extra parking for the car dealership next door. The salt shed had been here when they were young, but by then it was a pulled-pork joint. Small as they had been, they thought the building so tiny. That didn’t stop them from feeling awe: this was the place where their father first dreamed of bringing them home.

  Stavroula put the car in park in the middle of the road. They stared at the lot. Every few minutes, the traffic light ahead changed from green to red.

  “Stavroula. He’s dead.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  Litza turned her face to where a tattered yellow tape, tied to a post, was flapping in the wind. Stavroula put her hand on Litza’s leg. She had not done that maybe ever. She saw something else come over Litza’s face, a flicker. Too jagged and abrupt to be a smile.

  They ended up at the airport in long-term parking and watched the sun rise. This was how their father had entered the country, and
where they entered too. He came with three hundred dollars in his pocket, a beard, and a wife. Was he leaving with more, or less? At least a bright cloudless day, a pink sky. It brought the girls out of the car, though it was cold, and they perched on the hood and tracked the planes that approached from varying distances.

  In the promising daylight, Litza was already shrinking back into herself; another shitty cigarette in her shaky hand. She was crying.

  They had been doomed from the start. It had always been Stavroula’s task to carry her sister, but Litza was gallons and gallons of water, and all Stavroula could use was her hands. So she kept losing Litza, kept scooping her up, kept losing. She could cup her hands and hold her close, but what good would that do? She could never have carried enough of Litza to make a difference.

  Suddenly, a plane rushed overhead so close it loomed like the belly of a shark. And where was he? Where was he? Stavroula began to scream. She was shaking and swearing. None of this could be heard because of the shriek of the plane. Was she weeping for him? Weeping for her sister? She wouldn’t go back for Litza. She’d go forward, just as she had all her life. Because, if they made her, she would do it all over again: she would save herself first. Still.

  Litza yelled something over the roar of the plane.

  Stavroula shook her head. The roar was dying down.

  Litza said, “You hate him, too?”

  Stavroula laughed. She wiped her face on an old napkin and passed it to Litza, who also wiped her face.

  “Stevie,” Litza said, “it was me. I broke your window. I shouldn’t have, but I did it.”

  Stavroula slid off the hood. “I know. Let’s go.”

  They ended up at the diner, of course. Instead of smashing the bakery case, they opened it with a tiny silver key from the register. They pulled two stools up to the counter and surrounded themselves with trays of dessert, and Stavroula made coffee. She sweetened Litza’s for her and left her own black and strong. They went down the line of cakes, all looking more like costumes than food. They used forks, not plates, and left tracks in the frosting. Litza picked up an untouched sheet cake and took a bite of one of the corners. White and pink clumped to her chin. Stavroula wiped it off for her with her arm, and frosting stuck to her shirt. She slid the sheet cake back into the bakery case and said, “That one’s yours.” Meaning she wouldn’t touch it, and neither would anyone else, and it would stay there, imperfect, through the memorial.

  They were becoming dangerously full.

  “Chocolate cheesecake, to Dad.”

  “Lemon meringue. To Dad.”

  “Carrot cake: to Dad.”

  “Strawberry shortcake, Ruby’s favorite—to Dad.”

  Then Litza, taking a bowl from behind the counter, poured some cornflakes. She spooned chocolate cake on top, and then she covered it with powdered hot chocolate, poured milk over it, and then put it in the microwave for a minute. “Toast: to us.”

  Toast was disgusting: like eating a sweet swamp. They went back to cake.

  Then Stavroula reached for a lined notepad, the kind the waitresses used, and said, “To Dad.” Litza clapped. They began the letter, Dear Dad.

  Let We explain You something.

  Writing, it is not satisfying. It does not get close enough to what must be said.

  We write one draft that blames You for everything; We write another draft that saves You of everything. We absolve You, saying to Ourselves that We do not begrudge You Your Mistakes.

  But that is not true, either.

  How can We say exactly what We mean?

  We say it over and over.

  CHAPTER 27

  * * *

  If Marina does, it means death. It means that Stavros Stavros, a man voyaging between two worlds, will no longer be reached. Doing what Marina has been asked to do means: Marina will be shoving Stavros Stavros off on his last boat, shrouded in dark water with light fading fast, and light growing, too.

  Granting a man his final wish means closing his coffin door.

  But if Marina does not, it means denying a dying man his wish.

  And depriving the world of the last, last supper, perhaps the most glorious meal of Marina’s life. A meal, after all, of thanks. A meal that may have nothing to do with Stavros Stavros and all to do with her, the blessing of living, the life that she has lived alongside him.

  A letter has come to Marina, after all. It is in the common language—not Greek, but rather in the communication of food. And it is staked through the heart. The letter is not a letter; it is an order, written on the lined green pads the waitresses use. It is posted on the chef’s planchette as if it may have been there all along. It was not: she would have known.

  It is there now.

  It is insistent: goat.

  What she can make Stavros Stavros is meats, cheeses, a feast, a tray of just grapes, her best recipes and the ones they discovered together, bread, three salads, pork.

  But the letter demands: goat.

  Cannot. Marina cannot. Yet must.

  And does.

  At seven in the morning the girls feast on desserts, Marina can hear them. It is good, finally they are forced into a single boat and will row, row together. Marina, alone, goes outside. The back door clatters behind her.

  Marina, with a curved knife, displays the goat’s mysterious throat.

  It is done.

  The animal collapses, shaking to the earth, and Marina coos it to its death. Marina, always, always, holding the parts of the animal that cannot be held, that have been spilled. They bleed through her fingers.

  This is a compassionate killing, Marina hopes, she hopes to God.

  She scatters salt, excising evil, blessing this place.

  In her scattering, Marina’s wrist mimics the sputter of the goat’s willful, lifeless kicks.

  The day of mourning stretches so long, it will be a surprise if it does not reach everybody.

  The letter demands goat. OK, goat.

  But Marina demands: marrow. Great knotty logs of it, which she will roast for the here and gone, and they will eat at first with a spoon and some bread crust, and then plunge their tongues and fingers in it, and suck on the bone until they realize: there is no going deeper than this.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  Blessed are those whose way is blameless, the pappas chants.

  Incense clouds the air at his knees.

  The pappas wears a thick gold cloak and square black hat, shrouded in black and circled in gray.

  The agia trapeza is a table with gold crucifix, the saints, and a hundred beeswax candles, placed there by the faithful.

  The diner tables are cleared. There are rows of chairs facing the pappas, and they are filled with familiar, nameless people. Hero is there. The mistress is not. Dina is not. The family sits in a booth, Stavroula and Litza on one side, Mother and Ruby and Ruby’s new husband on the other.

  The pappas intones the Small Litany. At the third stasis, on the verse early in the morning the myrrh-bearers came to thee and sprinkled myrrh upon thy tomb, the pappas sprinkles rosewater.

  He offers the Amomos, the blameless.

  When he sings, the skin of his face becomes smooth, like a page.

  When he begins the memorial service, the pappas’s English is as cracked and elegant as driftwood. He asks, “What does it mean, really, to lose someone? What does it mean to say they are no longer with us?”

  The pappas never stops swinging the censer. He offers hymns, prayers that Stavroula does not understand. This does not feel like a funeral—or a memorial, whatever it’s meant to be. It feels like the pappas is a man reading foreign poetry, and all of these people are indulging him because they sense he has lost someone very dear. Patiently, they are waiting for him to stop speaking so they can return to their meals and conversation, joyous cutlery. They will buy his red carnations out of pity, if he would only let them and be gone.

  Stavroula smells myrrh, also cigarette through the clean shower scent on Lit
za. Both sisters have their hands in their laps, and neither of them cries. Stavroula’s eyes are cooking, and she thinks Litza must feel the same. How many days have they gone without sleep? Stavroula has trouble listening to the pappas. This is not the way she feels things, out in the open. Rather, she feels things in small cuts, with fine tools she holds close to her body. Otherwise she feels: nothing. Stavroula would like to go back to the kitchen with Marina, who, to nobody’s surprise, is avoiding the pappas’s poetry. But Stavroula cannot leave, Stavroula has brought everyone here. Mother is taking turns petting their hands and smiling kindly on the girls. She is nicely dressed, with tasteful jewelry, but instead of the black he demanded, she is wearing a bright pastel shirt in the spirit of Easter.

  The first thing Mother said when she came in was, “It was just an email.” As if she expected one of them to disagree. When they didn’t, she took them in her arms. Stavroula did not think they would all fit, but they did, coming together in an amorphous shape that seemed to spill out of itself. Mother would not let them go, even when Stavroula tried to pull away. Mother was crying, ruining her makeup. She kept saying, “My girls. My little orphans.”

  Ruby, who was crying without shame, said, “He won’t be here to see our children.”

  Stavroula, lighting her own candle at the pappas’s request, is realizing she may have the most hope. Litza, the least. Litza, drifting through the last few hours. She is lifting the dark material of her skirt and scratching her thigh, the same place. It is becoming raw. She’s wearing sunglasses and has not cried since this morning at the airport.

  The pappas interrupts his own service. In English, he explains that he has been called to do a job he cannot do. “I am summoned to give repose for the dear departed, but who is departed? Who is here for us to give our goodbyes?