by Alex A King
“What’s so interesting out that window, Sweetheart?” Grampy asks.
“Nothing,” she says vaguely.
He looks outside. “Who is the girl?”
Melissa shrugs. “She used to be a friend.”
“Heh, heh. Look at your mother. She is telling that girl something she does not like hearing.”
He’s right. Olivia is making a face like Mom’s flinging poop at her. Then Mom zips away, leaving her in a dust cloud.
Pretty awesome.
Grampy smiles out the window. “Your mother and grandmother, sometimes they remind me of very short amazons.”
Yeah, her mom is pretty cool. For a mom.
104
VIVI
BOWL, WATER, OLIVE OIL? Check.
Same ritual, different time. When Thea Dora drips the olive oil into the water, the droplets immediately separate.
Vivi yawns.
“You have the evil eye again! And it is very strong this time. See how fast and wide the oil spreads? It is like an egg.”
Of course.
Thea Dora draws a wet, oily cross on Vivi’s forehead, then it’s Vivi’s turn to swish, swish her finger in the bowl.
“Rub it on your lips,” her aunt instructs her. “Now, I do your mother, okay? Then we will do you again, to make sure you are clear.”
Exact same ritual, but her mother’s drops stay tight and whole.
Thea Dora smiles. “Sofia’s curse has gone to the grave with her body.” She dry spits into the air three times. “Just in case. Come, Vivi. Let’s make sure you are not still cursed.”
But Vivi’s curse is sticky. It likes her too much to leave.
Thea Dora shakes her head. “Someone is very persistent. We must try something else. It could be that this person went to a professional to place the curse.”
“Mama, are you here?” Effie's voice booms from outside.
“Come in, Effie,” Thea Dora screeches. “We are in the kitchen!”
A moment later, Effie barrels through the door. She’s cultivating a nest of long-legged black spiders in her armpits. And she doesn’t look happy to see Vivi. How surprising.
“Why are you here? I thought you were in jail.”
“Don’t be rude, Effie,” her aunt says. She’s busy poking through the spice rack. “Make some coffee.”
Effie hesitates, but not for long. Her face is pinched and pissed as she dumps coffee and sugar in the briki.
“Hold out your hand.” Thea Dora drops something in Vivi’s upturned palm.
Vivi looks up. “A bay leaf?”
“Chew it. While you are chewing, concentrate on turning the curse around, away from you and back to the person who made it. Afterward, I will give you three bay leaves to keep in your pocket – or your purse if you do not have pockets. Keep them with you always.”
“And this will work?” Potpourri as a shield against evil. Huh.
“If it was good enough for the ancient oracles, it is good enough for you!”
Eleni says, “Do it, Vivi. What harm can it do?”
Vivi shrugs. Why not? It’s not like it’s poison – right? “Bottoms up.” She chews. “This is the second worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”
“Concentrate.” Thea Dora pats her arm. “Turn the curse around.”
The bitter, oily eugenol is making it hard to concentrate on anything. Still, Vivi bundles up every tiny mishap from the time they arrived – Melissa’s wrist, Biff’s worms, the roof – all the way up to her night as a jailbird, then fires it off towards the unknown target.
Effie screams.
She’s covered in scalding coffee. Steam rises in a thin sheet from the coffee pool widening around her feet.
Thea Dora is on it. She snatches up the long handled whiskbroom and starts whipping Effie’s legs with sharp, vicious strokes.
“My God, Dora, have you gone mad?” Eleni yells.
Effie’s screaming and screaming, like someone stuck a knife in her.
Thea Dora isn’t in a listening mood. She hits and hits and hits. “What kind of woman are you to put a curse on your own cousin? Is this how I raised you? You are not too old or too important to take a beating.”
Wait, what? Vivi thinks. Effie cursed her?
She’s horrified but not all that surprised, now that she thinks about it. Effie hated her pretty much on sight. But this level of hate is crazy.
“Why couldn't you just go away?” Effie screams. “You should never have come here!”
Eleni tosses Vivi a towel.
“I have as much right to be here as you do.” Vivi kneels at Effie’s feet, soaks up as much brown as the white towel can take. The broom whistles past her ears.
Effie doesn’t want help. Correction: Effie doesn’t want Vivi’s help. Her foot jerks, nails Vivi in the ribs.
Vivi yells and rolls sideways. She kicks and she kicks hard. Right in Effie’s groin.
“If you had a problem with me, you should have had the ovaries to say something,” Vivi says.
“You think you are so wonderful with all your education and knowledge about every little thing in the whole world. You know nothing!”
“Ha! I know you're an idiot who might actually get a friend or two if you’d crack a smile.”
“Putana.”
“Cow. Mooooo.”
“You turned your husband into a homosexual!”
Vivi says, “Bitch, if you want war, you can have one.” Her left hook is mean. It should be – it’s never been used. Got about thirty-four years of resentment behind it.
It knocks Effie back. She rebounds off the counter, wrestles Vivi to the ground. Then she grabs Vivi’s hair and twists.
Vivi’s eyes flood. “I'd kick you in the ass,” she says, “but my foot would bounce right off all that Jell-O.” She stabs Effie with her elbow.
Eleni and Thea Dora are background noise.
“Should we stop them?”
“I say we let them fight. No need to panic until there is blood. Tell me, Eleni, how do you do that neat cross-stitch? All these years, still I cannot master that one stitch.”
Vivi sinks her teeth into Effie’s ear. She feels the satisfying crunch.
“It is all about where you slide the needle. You want that thread to go next to the neighboring threads, not on top of them.”
It’s a sideways punch, but it’s a good one. Hot blood spurts out of Vivi’s nose. She hooks a foot behind Effie’s knee, flips her, straddles her chest. Now she’s bleeding. All. Over. That. Bitch.
Effie spits, right in Vivi’s face.
“No spitting, Effie,” Thea Dora says passively. “Spitting is for lower-class putanas.”
“That's why I'm spitting at her, Mama.”
“I said no!” she barks. To her sister, in a sweeter voice: “How do you tie such neat knots on the back?”
Vivi pins Effie to the floor with one hand, wipes the spit off her own face, smooshes it into Effie’s. “Here, you left this behind, Miss Piggy.”
Effie clamps her teeth on Vivi’s finger. She bites until she’s violating the space between bones. A thin whine in Vivi’s head turns out to be her own crying. She hits and hits and hits. Effie’s jaw springs open.
Then she’s seeing stars. Cartoons, apparently, have correctly nailed the aftermath of a successful head-butt. All these years, she figured it was animated hyperbole. She staggers to her feet.
Is it over?
Hell no.
She snatches up Effie’s hand, wedges her cousin’s arm between her knees, bends that middle finger back, back, back. The crystal vase on the table considers shattering under the pressure of Effie’s squeal.
“Stop!”
“Apologize,” Vivi says, panting.
Eleni peers over. “Is that blood?”
“Yes, but it is just her nose,” Thea Dora says. “No vital organs.”
“Thank the Virgin Mary.
“I'll die before I apologize!” Effie screams.
How far back can
a finger bend before it snaps off?
Vivi doesn’t get a chance to find out. There’s a loud crack inside her skull. She drops Effie’s hand, staggers backwards.
Her cousin is gasping on the ground, one end of the broom clenched in her hand, the other half at Vivi’s feet.
“You should be in jail! I told the police you did it – why did they let you go so quickly?”
Silence. No more talk of needlepoint.
“Wait – you called the police and told them that my mother and I were killers?”
“Not Thea Eleni. Just you.”
Small miracle. Tiny. Miniscule.
“Why?”
“It was the only way to get rid of you! My life was okay until you came here. Now it's all 'Vivi this, Vivi that.' Even my children are second best now. You are all anyone talks about – not just in the family but also in town. No one asks how I am doing, they just want to know about you and America.”
“Effie, you do not know what you have done,” her mother says.
“You are the worst of all, Mama. My husband is cheating and did you offer me a place to stay? No! You just gossip and joke about it with your friends. But your precious Vivi comes crawling here because she doesn't have the strength to face life, and you throw the doors open wide for her.”
“Effie, Vivi is family! What would you have me do? Turn her away?”
“Fuck the Virgin Mary,” Effie yells. “I am your family, too!”
Screw this, Vivi thinks. This isn’t about her and Effie – it’s a mother-daughter thing. And mothers and daughters need to figure things out their own way.
Her face is on fire, her head’s pinging like a sonar, and a big red bird is unfolding its wings on her dress.
“Vivi, where are you going?” Eleni asks.
“Running away again?” Effie snarls.
Vivi shrugs. “The hospital, I guess.”
105
MAX
VIVI SAYS, “I THINK by dose is broken.”
Then she falls at his feet.
Max picks her up.
He doesn’t mind her falling at his feet. What he does mind is that someone did this to her. Right now he’s rethinking that whole Hippocratic Oath. Thinking about breaking some bones. Thinking about Anastasia and her threats.
He sits her on his desk. Her nose is a big, black balloon. The rest of her isn’t in much better shape.
“What did this? A boulder?”
“Close: Effie.”
“Is anything else broken?”
“I want to shake my head, but it hurts.”
He gets a wheelchair, rolls her down to radiology.
* * *
Nothing broken but her nose, and that will take care of itself with time.
“They can shoot you up with something good to dull the pain,” Max tells her.
“Is it chocolate?”
That’s a no.
“I’ll pass. I really want some chocolate.”
“I can get you some chocolate on the way home.”
“You’re taking me home?”
“What else can I do with you?”
She (almost) smiles.
He says, “We could hit Effie on the head and donate her body to science. I know people who could really use her organs.”
She (almost) laughs. “Effie’s probably taking a vinegar bath.”
He punches the elevator button. “Vinegar and rubbing alcohol are sound remedies for some things. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them.”
“Like what?”
“Alcohol is good for a fever. It evaporates and – boom – lower body temperature. But dilute it first – a lot. Otherwise you cool down too fast. Vinegar can soften calluses, and it's good for nausea.”
The elevator doors ping and they’re down and out. Vivi’s riding in her super cool wheelchair.
Max takes the VW. Vivi looks in the mirror and gasps.
“My nose is huge.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “You just look more Greek.”
* * *
Max makes a stop. “You have to do this,” he says.
“Effie’s my cousin.”
“So?”
He parks and walks her into the police station.
Quiet afternoon. Two cops hunched over their desks, and a woman in the corner, waiting.
The cops look up.
“Hey! Did you come back for more bread and cheese?”
“Ha-ha,” Vivi says. “I’m here about that anonymous tip.”
“What about it?”
“My cousin called it in.”
“Proof?”
Max says, “There were two other witnesses present when she confessed.”
The cop glances back at Vivi. “Which cousin?”
“Effie. Eleftheria.”
“Which one is that?”
Vivi looks up at Max. “I don’t even know her last name, to be honest.”
The other cop says, “The one whose husband is boning your sister.”
“Oh, her. Let’s bring her in, scare her a bit,” he says. To Vivi: “Why would she do that?”
“She hates me. And the right situation walked into her hands. That poor woman died and – ”
“Vivi?” The woman from the corner stands. “Are you Elias and Eleni Pappas’s daughter?”
Vivi squints at her. “Only if saying “Yes” won’t land me back in jail. Otherwise, no.”
That’s his woman, Max thinks. Not today, maybe. But she will be.
“Hello, Vivi,” she says. “I think perhaps we are supposed to be sisters.”
106
VIVI
WOW. WHAT DO YOU say to a bombshell like that?
Vivi takes the high, classy road. Says, “Hello, I’m Vivi. I’m sorry about your mother.” Offers her hand and an appropriate smile for the somber occasion.
She’s looking for similarities, differences, clues that they crawled out of the same gene pool. But there’s nothing. All they have in common is dark hair, dark eyes. Not a rare bird around here.
The other woman nods. “Thank you. I’m Nitsa Lambeti.”
Vivi analyses, analyses, but the only thing familiar about Nitsa’s smile is its sadness. Wasn’t long ago when Vivi’s face was set to grief.
A door slams in the guts of the building. A moment later, Detective Lemonis appears.
He says, “Your sister – or not – has something she wants to share with us. If you two can delay the family reunion, I think she has something that might affect you both.”
Vivi’s got nothing but questions, and now they have to wait. Meanwhile her broken nose is beating along with her heart. She’s trying to be tough, but . . . goddamn.
Nitsa retrieves a piece of paper from her very nice handbag. Vivi knows the brand – it’s expensive and hard to get. Now they’re standing side by side, she can see they’re the same height, a similar build. But Nitsa is more polished, fashionable.
Everyone leans over to look.
“It's a letter,” she explains. “From my mother. You may read it aloud.”
Detective Lemonis clears his throat and reads the words of a dead woman.
* * *
My daughter, my love,
I cannot love you with my whole heart in this life because it is full to the brim with hatred for the woman who denied you a father. She took away that which I loved above all (before you came along, of course). Therefore it is fitting that that the one who caused me so much pain will be blamed for my death, at least for a short time. It will be her turn to walk around, accusing stares piercing her weak shell, wondering how deep her sins truly run.
Nitsa, you have a sister and brother. They are only half, but blood is blood. While they carry the bad blood from their mother in their veins, do not forget that their father's also flows through them, and he was the best of men. Perhaps there is still time for you all to create a bond that goes beyond that of blood. Perhaps they will help you to know your father. This is my sincerest hope.
It i
s time for me to go. I am old, I am sick; my heart has been cracked for too many years. I am dying, yes, but it is I who will choose my time, my place. Do not cry.
You are my heart,
Mama.
PS: When you receive this letter, take it to the police. I would not deprive your sister and brother of a mother the way their mother deprived you of your father.
* * *
It’s a Hallmark moment, the two sisters hugging.
“So we’re sisters,” Vivi says.
Nitsa says, “Uh, no.”
107
NITSA
TURNS OUT NITSA LAMBETI is a woman with resources and curiosity in abundance. She has an excellent job at a television network, and she knows how to ask the right people the right questions the right (productive) way.
All her life, she heard Elias this, Elias that. Her mother was like a parrot with a one-word vocabulary. Nitsa was raised by half a mother and the shadow of Elias Pappas.
She spent her teens poring over photographs of her alleged father, searching for proof or rebuttal. Growing up in Agria, there was no way she could sidestep the gossip about her mother and potential fathers. Her mother denied the others, of course, said Elias was the only one. And Nitsa, who grew to recognize an obsession when she saw one, nodded and said she believed her mother.
Because there’s nothing else to be done when you love your mother and she loves you.
Nitsa dug in secret.
Digging in secret became easier when she relocated to Athens for work. She found Elias Pappas, his wife, his two grown children. She called and spoke to Elias, and he was as good as her mother said.
Too bad he’s not her father.
The DNA test was clear about that.
108
VIVI
LAZY AFTERNOON ON THE porch. Summer is taking its pound of sweat and salt. Nobody is sleeping; nobody wants to waste this one perfect day.
“I knew it,” Eleni says. “I knew she could not be your sister. Now I have proof that her mother was a madwoman.”