by Alex A King
Oh, God. No privacy whatsoever.
Vivi leaves Melissa to her book and her bad mood.
“What am I going to do with her?” she asks her aunt. But her aunt doesn’t have answers – she’s too busy being distracted by a noise from outside.
There are people out there: a leather-skinned woman and her waif-like moppet. They’re dressed as Christmas trees – sort of.
“My Christ, tsiganes,” Thea Dora mutters. “Get out, you dirty gypsies!”
The hunched woman scoots her child forward. Round brown eyes looked up at them, imploring. Working the con. “Please, can we have food or money?”
Thea Dora runs back inside, snatches up the broom she keeps in the kitchen. She waves it like this is Sparta. “You want food or money, get a job! Go, go!”
The gypsy woman grins, showing old, broken piano keys. On closer inspection it strikes Vivi that this woman, with her dehydrated skin and weary gait, probably isn’t much older than her.
“A curse on your family,” the Romani woman says, her gaze fixed on Thea Dora.
Three dry spits in the air. “The Virgin Mary will take your curse and shove it – ”
“Thea, wait.” Vivi pulls out ten euro, holds it out to the kid. It vanishes into a dirty pocket.
A lot of Eleni-like skyward hand waving happens. “No good can come of giving a gypsy money. They will tell all the other gypsies to come here for money. And if you do not give them money, next time they will hit you on the head and rob you.”
“My people are not thieves,” the woman says. “Thank you for your generosity.” She steers her child out the gate.
“Wait,” Vivi calls out. “Are we still cursed?”
“Not you.” The woman points at Vivi’s aunt. “Just her.”
Thea Dora is still waving her hands in the air. “You might be Greek, but you do not understand the way things work here. Never encourage gypsies. If you make them angry they will curse you. Curses can be very difficult to break. One day you will wake up dead!”
“How can you wake up if you’re dead?”
With a snort of disgust, her aunt shoves the broom into her hands.
“Sweep towards the street. We do not want the bad luck coming into the house.”
25
MELISSA
MELISSA WANTS IAN TO die in a huge fire.
If Dad had to go all Elton John, why couldn’t he have picked a decent boyfriend? She hates Ian, with his shiny suits and brightly colored socks. He always makes these dumb baby voices when he talks to Dad.
And Dad always makes her say hi to Ian when they talk on the phone. It’s like he’s got this messed up fantasy where she and Ian are friends.
Not happening.
She can practically hear him grinning and gloating. He’s glad he stole Dad. He never says it out loud, but she can almost see it on his dumb face.
Mom just doesn’t get it. She just goes on and on about how much Dad loves her, and how he’s sad he doesn’t get to see Melissa every day.
If he’s so sad, why did he leave them?
It’s dark in the spare room. Cool. Well, cooler. She hugs her pillow, drags the sharp tip of the safety pin across her wrist. Right wrist. The left is raw. Turns out it stings like crazy if you get salty sea water in a cut. She’s spent ten minutes digging out specks of sand, but there’s more inside. They’re squirming deeper inside her. Like bugs. Scabies, or something totally gross like that.
There’s a soft knock on the door. “Mel? I'm coming in.”
Mel, not Melissa, which means Mom isn’t mad. Probably she wants to do the whole “Boohoo, I’m such a bad mother. Forgive me,” speech. What-ev-er.
One last poke before sliding the woven bracelets into place.
“Yeah?”
Mom’s forehead is all crumpled like a tissue and she looks sad. Suddenly, Melissa feels like crap. What’s wrong with her? She doesn’t feel like she belongs in her own skin anymore. She’s a body snatcher, wriggling around in a Melissa Tyler suit. She drove Dad away and now she’s making Mom sadder.
You suck, Tyler.
“Hey, Honey.” Mom’s trying to sound cheerful but her voice is crackling. “If you're going to get dressed up you'd better get a move on. Everyone will be here soon.”
More family – what a pain in the ass.
“I don't have anything to wear. I'll just stay here.”
Mom picks up a hairbrush from the vanity. “How about that pretty dress we picked up at Macy’s?”
It’s a cute dress with blue flowers that Trudy would totally dismiss as babyish. Whatever, Trudy isn’t here. Just Melissa all alone with all her friends. “I guess.”
“I'll let you have a spritz of my good perfume. Your choice.”
“Really? What about some powder? I'm glowing in the dark.”
It’s kind of nice the way Mom sits down and starts pulling the brush through Melissa’s hair. It reminds her of when she was little, when Mom did her hair a new way every day. Mom can do any kind of braid, any kind of up-do. All Melissa had to do was point at a glossy magazine picture and Mom made it happen on her head.
“Okay, Kiddo, just this once. But go easy on it.” Her smile shines. Melissa realizes she hasn’t seen Mom smile – really smile – in a long time. “I'm doing a pretty good imitation of a stop light myself.”
Something smells weird. “Mom, you smell like salad.”
Mom laughs. For the tiniest moment Melissa feels good. It’s almost like the old days.
26
VIVI
WHEN RELATIVES ATTACK.
See it now on the Discovery Channel.
Apostolia, Apistoli, Giorgios, Yannis, Vasiliki, Vaso, Eleutheria, and a dozen variations – and generations – swarm the evening air. Predatory moths, every last one of them.
Vivi mouths, “Help me” across the room at Melissa. Melissa tries a smile, but it’s not convincing. Poor kid looks overwhelmed. If she runs out screaming, Vivi will be right behind her.
It’s a swirl of names and faces and hugging and kissing and dry spitting to ward away the evil eye. The horde is around thirty strong – not including the demolition team made up of children.
“Out!” Thea Dora shrieks when the turmoil turns tornado. The children scamper outside to play in the street. Resigned to being one of the kids, Melissa follows, leaving Vivi with the wolves.
This is Eleni’s family. Vivi’s father was an only child, and his parents died when Vivi was a kid. They were an anomaly at a time when Greeks popped out a soccer team – if they could. Eleni and Dora’s mother made nine of the little suckers, and eight of them are in this room.
* * *
Now is a good time for a commercial.
Specifically: Hair removal.
This family needs it.
Three aunts, eight daughters, all with chins like the wrong end of a boar. Vivi can’t help running a hand over her own chin. Feels smooth enough. But in time? Who knows?
Right now the only body hair problem she’s got are her legs, and that’s an easy (but not cheap; the price of blades is crazy) fix.
* * *
“When is Eleni coming to visit?” asks Three of Nine.
Someone passes Vivi a bottle of retsina. She takes a long swallow and gasps as the alcoholic Pine-Sol taste punches her in the throat.
“I'm not sure – ”
“Ay yi yi! She not even come home when her mother died. The shame!” another aunt shrieks.
“And you, where is your husband?”
Can opener tongue. Ass like a shelf. Black hair, black eyeliner, lipstick a life-threatening shade of cyanosis. Ladies and gentlemen, Cousin Effie. Vivi’s been listening to her all night, spouting stupidity like she’s a devout follower of the arcane science of nonsensical dumb shit. They should put her picture up in schools: see what happens if you don’t graduate?
But Vivi’s cool – everyone gets a chance.
Thea Dora sidles up to Vivi’s interrogator. Never would have picked them for a mother-daughter pair. Anywa
y, her aunt whispers something in her daughter’s ear, and all Vivi can think is: snake; small snake, but a snake is a snake is a snake.
Effie’s smile widens – her day just got better.
“So, he won't be coming, eh?”
“Not a chance.” Now this is irony. John is the Tyler who belongs in Greece, with its historical fondness for Homo erectus.
“Why not?”
“I know you know we’re getting divorced.”
“But his daughter is here! What kind of man allows a woman to take his children away?”
“John’s a busy man. He can’t ditch work to follow Melissa around the world.”
“What, in America you can't take a vacation? And they call themselves civilized.” She looks to the crowd for confirmation.
“He took his vacation last year. We went to Hawaii.”
To be fair, it’s only a half lie – the half with Vivi in it. There was Hawaii, and John was there in January for a convention. He’d gone (allegedly) alone. Though now she wonders if Ian went, too, if they walked hand in hand, like there was no Vivi, no Melissa, at home.
“Oh.” Her surprise is the only genuine thing about her. “You speak Hawaiian?”
What Vivi tells herself is that this is a joke. A piece of her is waiting for Effie to yell, “Psych!” Then Effie will be like, “Ha-ha, you should see your face. Did you really think anyone could be this stupid and live?”
But it doesn’t go that way. So, Vivi’s stuck standing there, defending her education and common sense, as though they’re the bad guys.
“Hawaii is part of the United States.”
“Hawaii is not in America. It is an island!”
“Eight major islands. And they've been part of the USA for nearly fifty years.”
The way Effie’s blinking, there’s no way she’s buying it. “No!”
“Yes.”
“Vivi!” Thea Dora pushes a newcomer between them, sending each bitch back to her corner. “This is your uncle's sister-in-law's cousin’s daughter, Maria.”
Effie fades away. It’s a temporary situation.
Vivi knows two things always come around again: Everything under the sun, and sharks.
27
MELISSA
YOU DON'T LOOK GREEK,” says one of the slightly older cousins. “Do you speak any Greek?”
“Some.”
“What?”
Melissa reels off kalimera, kalispera, and kalinykta. (Good morning, good evening, good night.)
The cousins are unimpressed.
“I know some swear words,” she offers.
“Do you know American swear words?”
“Sure.”
“What is means ‘Son of the bitch’?”
Melissa hesitates, because how do you explain that one?
One of her smaller cousins tugs on her dress. “Melissa, come play with us.”
The older cousins laugh. “Go on, play with the babies.”
“Go fuck yourself, you sons of bitches,” she says.
Cue the “Oooooooooooh, you so bad!” chorus.
* * *
“Mom?”
Mom looks startled. “You okay, Honey?”
“Can I go and lie down?”
“What’s wrong?”
“This isn’t really fun.”
“It’s not, is it? Tell you what, Kiddo. We both have to tough this one out. If you can survive through tonight, tomorrow I’ll personally hunt down a McDonald’s for you. How does that sound?”
“Sounds great, Mom.”
Sounds anything but great.
* * *
The paper is piling up in the bathroom’s wicker trashcan. Skid marks veer off the top piece, plummeting into the can’s shitty depths.
Nice.
Whatever. Melissa’s not here to pee.
She’s not really here to do anything.
She’s not really here.
That feeling has come over her again, of being a Melissa puppet, controlled by bored hands. Everything she does, she does because someone else is manipulating her moving parts. Lock the door, Melissa. Don’t worry that it’s one (sort of) toilet and fifty people, Melissa. Look at your wrist, Melissa. Do you see it? You’re filled with sand. That’s a problem you need to solve, here and now. Turn your head left. Let me look through the medicine cupboard. I don’t see anything that can stop you from turning to sand – do you? No nail clippers, no scissors, no file. I wonder, Melissa, what does your great-aunt do when her toenails get too long? Does she gnaw them in her sleep or –
Never mind, Melissa. Look in the bag – your mother’s makeup bag. The one with the white yellow white yellow daisies. Hmm . . . Enough supplies to make the Red Cross envious, but not a one of them appropriate for scraping sand from flesh.
Ah, now here is something. You won’t like it, Melissa. But let me promise you that, while this is a tough love intervention, you will be – in the end – saved. So pick up the palette of sensible neutrals. Drop it. Pick up the glitter, the shards that reveal only slivers of you – an eye here, a nostril there.
You know what to do, don’t you, Melissa?
Scraaaaaaaape the sand out and away. Let it ride the red wine river out of your wrist and onto that childish dress you’re wearing.
There’s a word in her mouth, but it won’t come out.
H
E
L
P
It’s stuck there, blocking the ME.
Those bored hands drop her strings, and move on and away. They’re done with her, done with this boooooring game. The towel is close, but either it’s too slippery or the ground is too slick, because she can’t stay upright. Her concrete body falls . . .
Stephen King was wrong. The floating doesn’t happen down in the sewer, in the yawning pipes below ground. It happens up here, if you’re lucky, lucky, lucky.
Melissa . . .
Floats.
28
VIVI
THE RETSINA IS STRONG, but hey, it’s something to do.
When she spots Effie, Vivi slips out of the room and into another, where she continues her imitation as the sparkling (glowing) guest of honor.
Different room, same questions. And so it goes. She would have printed a FAQ, but she’s not sure they can all read.
Now Effie’s coming at her from a new angle, dragging one of her kids by the elbow. The poor kid’s legs are crossed and he’s doing the got-to-pee jiggle.
“Tell her,” Effie barks.
Vivi crouches beside the little guy. “Are you okay, George?”
“Thea Vivi, Melissa won’t come out of the bathroom.”
“Wait until she's finished, Honey. Then you can go in.”
“But I need to go now, and she’s taking forever.”
“How long has she been in there?”
He thinks about it for a moment. “Forever. I yelled at her to come out but she won't answer.”
“She didn't say anything?”
Shaggy brown hair whips his face. “No.”
“Who knows what she is doing in there,” Effie says.
Vivi sets the bottle on the nearest flat surface. Then she goes to the bathroom to see what’s up. She jiggles the handle.
Locked.
“Mel? It’s just me. Are you okay?”
Nothing.
Now her nerves are shot-gunning Ping-Pong balls inside her head. She bashes the door with both fists. “Melissa?”
Thea Dora appears at her side, along with her posse of flapping tongues.
“What is wrong?”
“Melissa’s in there.”
“Is she sick?”
No time for stupid questions. She needs action, not questions.
“How the hell should I know? She's locked herself in there!”
A big guy pushes through the crowd. One of her uncles – Theo Apostoli. He has hair like a lion and a screwdriver in one hand.
He looks at the door. “Good thing somebody put this door on wrong, eh?”
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“It is not wrong,” Thea Dora says.
“It is wrong. Trust me.”
It takes forever, the process of digging out the hinges. They’ve seen a lot of paint.
Then the boulder rolls (slumps) aside and she’s in.
Time slows to a drunken crawl. Vivi turns to stone. A Melissa doll is on the floor, broken and drowning in red, red wine.
It’s fragmented after that. Some moments are too difficult to swallow hole. Try choking them down and you may as well shove a grenade into your mouth.
Pulse: Yes. Fast, shallow.
Breathing: Yes.
Someone gives her a towel, tape.
She says, “Hospital, now.”
“Come,” her uncle says. “We go in my car.”
Hands reach for Melissa, but Vivi’s not giving her up.
Thea’s mouth is moving.
“You want me to come?”
“No.”
They move through a field of whispers, to the gate. The car is there and it’s ready to leave.
Effie is a temporary newel post. Up down, up down, with her stupid clown face. “My Virgin Mary, what kind of mother is she that her daughter would do such a thing?”
A whisper intended to be heard by all.
It’s not her way, but Vivi prays.
29
MAX
MAX IS AT THE hospital, as (if his mother and girlfriend are to be believed) always.
This isn’t his usual stomping ground. Max is in the ER as a favor. It’s been quiet, as far as nights go. Not so bad.
Until the woman staggers in.
There’s no missing her, the pink woman cradling a blonde girl. Tourists. Probably British or German. Her scaffolding is about to collapse.
Then he sees the dull red flower unfurling on her dress. Her hands are blood and bone.
Max runs.
“Oh my God, please tell me someone here speaks English. Help! Please help my daughter!”
“Why is she still standing there?” he barks at the nurse. “Come,” he says in English. “I’ve got her. He snatches the girl from her, rushes to the nearest empty treatment room