by Alex A King
“I need to know,” Vivi says. True. She also wants to know.
“Yes.” Thea Dora looks sideways at her niece. “I think it is time. Many years ago, long before your parents left Greece and you and Christos were born, your mother was one of the prettiest girls in town. So many boys she had begging for her attention, that our mother would throw old bread and scraps not fit for the animals at them when they came calling. Eleni, she was not so interested in any of them, although she thought them amusing. Mostly because she could make them do anything she wanted. Then one day she met your father. He was very handsome, but quiet and much more shy than Eleni.”
“He still is,” Vivi says.
“He is a good man, your father. Effie's father was a pig, but he could show a woman a good – ”
“Mama!”
Now here’s a first: Vivi agreeing with Effie. Some things don’t need to be said or heard. Where’s the brain bleach when you need it?
“When they met, Eleni fell in love with him like that!” Finger snap. “He was all she would talk about, all the time. Our father made her sit outside to eat so he would not hear ‘Elias this, Elias that’ all through the meal. But your father was already promised to another woman – a woman his family had chosen for him.”
Aaaand there’s the juice. Bitter, bitter juice.
“Sofia,” Vivi murmurs.
“Yes, Sofia. She was very quiet like your father, but sneaky, like the fox. And Eleni, she was not discreet. Always she says what she thinks and feels, so it did not take long for talk to reach Sofia. She was furious when she discovered Eleni was in love with her fiancé. Before long, she was following Eleni all over town, checking to make sure she was not with Elias. Of course, as soon as Eleni realized what Sofia was doing, she would walk for miles out of her way, with Sofia sniffing her footsteps like a hound. At the time, we had many laughs about it. We would take turns constructing new routes and creating fake rendezvous, all to make Sofia crazy.
“Somewhere along the way, Elias decided he had enough of Sofia's accusations and suspicions, so he convinced his parents that if he married Sofia, their children might be crazy, too. By this time they heard all the rumors and decided that their son was right, Sofia was not an appropriate bride for their only child. They wanted good strong grandchildren who would carry on the family name.
“Once the engagement was broken, Sofia became even more crazy. In the middle of the night she would throw rocks on our roof. When Elias and Eleni began courting, Sofia would often follow the couple, screaming obscenities at them. She set our father’s motorcycle on fire. She strangled our cat. She told anyone who would listen that your mother made witchcraft with her vagina and used it on your father – can you imagine? Then one day she stopped, just like that. Eleni and Elias became engaged, and they married soon after.
“Eleni was so beautiful on her wedding day. You have seen the photos?”
Vivi nods. “She was beautiful. They looked happy.”
Happier than she was on her wedding day.
“Sofia came into the church screaming that she was pregnant with Elias's child. Eleni snapped. She marched through the church, a warrior of Artemis in her long white dress, and grabbed Sofia's ear. Almost pulled it off her head! By the ear, she dragged that woman from the church and threw her out like a bag of garbage. Can you imagine, your tiny mother doing such a thing?”
“Was Sofia really pregnant?”
Her aunt shrugs. “Then? Who knows? Not long after, there were rumors Sofia was sneaking around in the woods with different men, many with poor reputations, some married with their own families. She left town for a while and came back with a daughter, but was it your father's? Nobody knows. Maybe not even Sofia knew.
“Not long after, your parents left for America. Sofia kept her distance from the family until Eleni came back. And now she is dead. It is for the best – a blessing.”
Holy shit. Vivi’s hands shake when she picks up the coffee cup. She’s full and fat from so much information.
Before she had no answers and one question; now she has answers but also a hundred questions.
And another (painful) thing: she and Max are her parents, all over again. Maybe he wasn’t happy with Anastasia but he was content, until Vivi shook him up like a Pepsi Cola. He could have had a happy life with another woman, one who was young enough to give him a dozen chubby-cheeked babies. One who wasn’t toting Vivi’s emotional baggage all over town.
A hundred questions. She starts with one.
“What happened to Sofia’s daughter?”
Effie pounces. “What, you think she would want to see you now, after your mother killed hers?”
“No good can come of it, Vivi. It is best you leave it – and her – alone,” Thea Dora says, without looking up from her crochet.
“If you wanted me to leave it alone you wouldn't have told me.” Vivi looks at her aunt, sees the truth of that comment smeared all over her face. Thea Dora is itching for her to go out there, settle the town gossip once and for all. Is Sofia’s daughter her half-sister? Vivi’s blood can answer that question.
Goodbye, last untainted sip of coffee. Hello, sludge.
Thea Dora sets aside her hook, her yarn, her cotton flowers. “My love, let me read your cup.”
Why not? She slides the cup on its saucer.
“I can see it now,” Effie says. “Suffering, disaster.”
Thea Dora tilts the cup this way, that way.
“I see a gate. Much success will come your way. That is good, yes?”
“I'll take it,” Vivi says, not buying a word of it. On the other hand, a tiny piece of her wants to believe – but only when the cup is showing nice things.
“Trees, also. This means good things are coming. But there is an eye, the sign of a duplicitous person. Someone is jealous of you and they will betray you. Maybe they already have. I cannot say for sure. It is on the cusp of future and present.”
“Cheerful.” Vivi peers in the cup. Nothing but brown blobs. You could say it’s all Greek coffee to her.
Effie pushes her cup forward. “Now do mine, Mama.”
Dora picks up her crochet. “We already know your future, Effie. You will get fatter, your children will grow up to have many sons, and your worthless husband will continue to sleep with that donkey from the supermarket. What do you want to know?”
Effie glances at Vivi, but Vivi’s doing the right thing, looking far, far away.
“Stop spreading lies, Mama.”
“Bah. Just last night after Eleni left, I went to get water, and what do I see? I see him driving to her house. He was not home at midnight, was he?”
“We were at the festival,” Effie says.
“Oh?”
“Mama, stop! Not in front of her!”
Her. Like she’s dog shit on a shoe. Still, she cuts Effie a lot of slack this time. Vivi’s not the only one with parental woes; lack of empathy runs through the family veins.
She holds out a shaky olive branch. “If you ever need to talk, Effie . . .”
“I don’t need your pity!”
Smack. Goodbye branch.
“I only meant – ”
“Once again it's all about you,” Effie says. “You should never have come here.”
“Enough!” Thea Dora slams her fist on the table, makes a small earthquake.
Vivi says, “Hey, my husband was a cheating bastard, too. I thought we – ”
“Don't compare your troubles to mine! Mama, you need to still your tongue.”
“Effie,” Vivi’s aunt says, “we are all family here. Everybody in town knows. It is no secret.”
Vivi (in a rare Eleni moment) says, “I didn't know. So not everybody. Technically, now everybody does . . .”
Yeah, the death toll in town is high enough today.
Anyway, the conversation is destined to get cut short. Somewhere down the street there’s a commotion. Melissa shoots into the yard, panting.
“Mom, it’s the police. Th
ey’re coming.”
Thea Dora drops the crochet needle, heaves herself out of the chair. It sags with relief.
“Good,” she says. “They have let Eleni go free, of course!”
That doesn’t sound right. The police don’t drive you home the morning after – or the day of. It’s the drive of shame, for you. Get a ride from a cab, from a lawyer. Walk if you have to. Just get out of here.
And don’t leave town until we say it’s cool.
Vivi, Effie, Thea Dora, and Melissa all rush out into the choking street. It’s all very Three Stooges, the way the car bumps and bounces. Every few feet (meters, if you’re living the base 10 life) there’s a new thing to dodge. Bicycles, kids, chickens – none of them step aside with gusto. The whole neighborhood is there to watch this hot, new show.
“Maybe they want to arrest you, too,” Effie says. “You and your mother could be cellmates.”
“Or maybe they just found out you beat your children.”
Bicker, bicker.
The police car is getting a workout, today. It’s the same one that came for Eleni. Two uniforms. Younger and in much better shape (read: not donut-shaped) than the cops who arrested Eleni.
“Paraskevi Tyler?”
Effie points.
Thanks for nothing, Vivi thinks. She raises her hand the grade school way. “I'm Vivi Tyler. Is my mother okay?”
“Paraskevi Tyler, you’re under arrest for your role in the murder of Sofia Lambeti.”
Where’s the part where they ask questions before jumping to conclusions?
Where are her Miranda rights?
(Same place as Ernesto Arturo Miranda’s bones: back in the USA.)
“Mom?” Melissa’s shaking and white. Vivi hugs her as hard she can.
“Stay with Thea Dora, okay? If I'm not back by this evening, make sure she takes you to feed Biff. I love you, Honey.”
No melodrama for Vivi. She offers up her wrists and goes without a fight.
“This is a mistake.”
Snap, click.
“That’s what they all say,” the cop tells her.
Not only is she an alleged criminal but she’s common, too.
“Make sure Biff goes potty before you lock him back up again,” Vivi calls out.
Her aunt waves like Vivi’s going on a cruise. Only thing missing is the “Bon Voyage!”
Vivi slumps against the back seat. This day is perfect – puuuurfect.
The police car rolls down the hill – backwards.
The cop who isn’t driving turns around to look at her. “You are American, eh? Do you know Robert DeNiro?”
98
VIVI
SECOND TIME VIVI’S BEEN in a jail cell this year (if she’s counting twelve-month stretches, not the calendar year). How does this one fare?
She takes inventory.
One granite mattress, two sandpaper sheets, one pillow with an eating disorder. The blanket is woven from Europe’s finest steel wool.
Vivi can’t sleep in this palace.
It’s not the bedding. It’s not that night two of the festival is happening a block over and doesn’t care that she’s trying to sleep. Boom, boom, boom. Singing, laughter, and the occasional squeal.
That’s not so bad. It’s good to hear people celebrating.
The main reason she can’t sleep is on the bottom bunk.
Eleni won’t shut up. On and on, mouth chewing air. Bringing up this, bringing up that, dredging up crap that happened thirty years ago. Raking muck. Cursing that one plumber for traipsing his filthy boots over her clean kitchen floor.
Vivi thinks about killing her just to get some peace. Finally, she says, “Did you kill Sofia?”
That makes her mother clam up. Temporarily. Vivi pictures her down there, opening and closing her mouth, a guppy in a metal-barred fishbowl.
“Of course not! What would make you think such a thing?”
“I don't know, Mom. But the police must have something or you wouldn’t be here.”
Eleni climbs out of her bunk bed, looks Vivi in the eye.
“They arrested you, too. Did you kill that worthless donkey?”
Touché. “No. But then I had no motive. You did.”
“Dora!” she curses. “She told you!”
Vivi can’t do this lying down. Now they’re both pacing the postage stamp-sized floor.
“Why not? Everyone else seems to have scoop on our family history. It’s like John all over again, me being the last to know. Why didn't you tell me I might have a half-sister out there?”
Eleni stops mid-pace. “She is nothing to you! That woman opened her legs for so many men the Virgin Mary Herself probably does not know who the father is.” Back to pacing. “Do not stir up the past, Vivi. Nothing good comes of it.”
“In case you have noticed, the past is beyond stirred. Someone shook it up and let it fizz aaaaall over the place! That woman is dead and they think one of us – maybe both of us – killed her. Your past could stop us from having a future. What about your granddaughter? Do you want her to grow up without a mother and grandmother?”
“Vivi, why do you say such ugly things to your mother? This has nothing to do with Melissa. We are both innocent, the police will see that.”
Vivi climbs up on her perch. Back to the wall, she bangs her head lightly on the cinderblock. Repetition – it’s great for concentration.
“Lots of innocent people in prisons, Mom. The news is full of them.” Tap, tap. “Think, Mom, there has to be a reason we're in here. They have something that makes them certain one or both of us are guilty. What could they possibly have besides an ancient grudge?” Tap, tap. “I’m the worst mother in the world.” Eleni stays silent. “No, no, don’t contradict me.”
Eleni takes the low bunk – again. Vivi goes back to sifting her ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys’.
* * *
What’s Melissa doing?
Is she okay?
Did she feed Biff?
If only John hadn't bounced out of the closet with CPA Joe. If only he’d been honest with himself years ago. Yeah, it’s been hard for her, but how hard was it for him to live a lie? Poor, stupid bastard.
Rewind: If only John hadn’t bounced out of the closet . . .
Melissa wouldn’t have cut her wrists.
She and her mother wouldn't be in jail.
Melissa wouldn't have lost her virginity to some smooth-talking Romeo with a loaded missile in his boxers.
They wouldn't be in Greece at all.
And she wouldn’t have met Max.
Vivi thinks impure thoughts, fucks Max in her head, over and over. Feels the way he made her feel. He’s a talented man, but that’s not his bottom line by a long shot. He’s kind, affectionate, sensible, and –
* * *
“Mom?”
“What, Vivi?”
“Where were you last night?
“After the festival I went to Dora’s house.”
“And after that?”
“I walked back to your house.”
“No,” Vivi says. “Thea said you left, then she went to get water around midnight. That’s when she saw Effie’s husband. You came home hours after that.”
“Maybe I was having drinks with the rest of the family at the festival.”
“I don't think you were.”
“Well then, Miss Know-all, where was I?”
Vivi scoots forward. Her legs dangle over the edge. “I think you went to Sofia's house to confront her. Or you came across her somewhere and somebody saw you together. That same somebody told the police that maybe you were the last one to see her alive.”
“Where is the harm in talking to an old acquaintance?”
“Nemesis. And everybody knows it.”
Silence.
Vivi says, “But that doesn't explain why I'm here.”
Back to the cinderblock wall, to the tap, tap, tapping.
“Stop that. You are giving me a headache.”
“You’re
giving me a headache,” Vivi says.
“Ungrateful brat.”
“I’m grateful,” Vivi says. “Being in jail is awesome. Everyone should try it sometime.”
One block over, the festival is winding down. Happy, tired voices dance along the street.
“Yes, I spoke to Sofia. She came to me. Leaped out from behind a tree as I was leaving Dora’s house. She wanted to let me know that she took something from me just as I took something from her. I took nothing! Elias never wanted to marry her.”
“What did she take?”
“It is nothing. Old business.”
“Mom . . .
“What she told me was a lie. The same lie she has been telling for years. She said that she had your father’s first child – not me. She said she took that first from me. No matter what I do, Elias’s firstborn child will always be hers. Like I said, a lie. Her daughter is not your father’s.”
“Do you know for sure?
“Of course I know!”
“Okay, okay.”
Another stretch of silence. This time Vivi almost misses the talk.
“Say something,” she says.
“Your father and I,” Eleni says from her bunk, “before I left, we had a fight, and he said maybe he should have married Sofia instead of me.”
“Whoa, what? Why didn’t you say something?”
“And what would you have done? Pitied me?” The bunk creaks. “You were such a happy baby, Vivi. It broke my heart when you married John.”
And the revelations keep on rolling.
“Why? I thought you and Dad loved him, even though you objected at first.”
“Your father always wanted another son. John filled the position. But I knew different. Something was not right about him, I saw it the day you brought him home.”
“I wish you'd told me sooner,” Vivi says.
“Would you have listened? Just like your mother, nobody tells you how to live. When you married John, I could see you were not happy, not the way a bride should be. You did not have that glow from lots of good sex.”