The Clover House

by Henriette Lazaridis Power

  I feel a hand on my waist. It’s the young man from the parrot-blue woman.

  “I followed you,” he says.

  I tilt my head to the side. “It’s not supposed to work that way. You’re supposed to wait until I choose you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I wasn’t interested,” I say, enjoying the ease with which I am falling into this role.

  “Choose me now,” he says.

  In answer, I lead him into the center of the room, among the dancers, and for a while we make the small shuffling dance steps that serve as an excuse to rub your body against someone else’s.

  “Want some wine?” he shouts over the music.

  “Sure.”

  But after he hands me another plastic cup, I manage to wander away from him to another part of the room. It is darker here, shadowed by the mezzanine that overhangs the space. Here, people are freer—holding on to each other, wrapping themselves around each other. I cast a look about for Nikos but don’t see him and am relieved. But I do see Stelios. He is walking through the edge of the dancers, scanning the shadows for someone. When he moves out of the dance-floor lighting, I step toward him.

  Keeping my mask in place, I slide my arms up around his neck and remember the stubble I felt there when he carried me from the square on the night of the parade. He runs his hands up into the sleeves of the domino, along my arms and over the smooth fabric of my blouse. I step closer, pushing against him, giving him the signal that there can be more. Now I feel the exhilaration I saw on the young man’s face before, with the parrot-blue woman. And now I understand the power of the domino. It is the power of being no one, with no identity and no ties, no origins and no home. I have spent so much time lately looking for this kind of freedom, and here it is, behind a mask and beneath a tailored shroud of black cloth.

  Stelios has pulled his hands out from my sleeves and is moving them along my sides. He lets his thumbs glide over my breasts. So this is what he does when Anna is not around. I dismiss the scolding thought of Jonah. I am enjoying this and it seems important. I pull his face down to me and begin to kiss him, a deep, dirty kiss.

  “I’m glad you’re wearing this,” he says afterward.

  Me too, I say to myself, thinking of my domino. I notice he is holding my hand, playing with the red beads of the bracelet Anna bought for us all.

  “Shit!” I hiss, biting back the word before it is out.

  “What did you say?”

  Before I can answer, he pushes my mask onto my forehead and kisses me, hard. His tongue flicks along the edges of my teeth, as if inviting me to give up. Of course he has known me all the time, and I have been ridiculous. I thought I was playing him, but he was playing me. I bite down on his tongue, not too much, but enough to let him know I’ve understood his game.

  He makes a noise of surprise and pulls back.

  “Did that hurt?” I ask, mocking.

  “No. Does this?” He pinches my nipple, beyond the point of pleasure.

  “No,” I lie.

  “Good.”

  He pinches it again, only this time just enough to make me want him. I rub my hand across his crotch and feel him getting hard.

  All this time, we have been moving backward, toward the darkest section of the room. Now we come up against a wall and he pulls me around so that my back faces outward. I suddenly realize that the domino that gave me such a sense of power is actually getting in my way. Everything I think of doing with Stelios is foiled by the damned thing. I have a sudden urge to punish him—for playing me, and for playing around while Anna does whatever she is doing elsewhere in the room. I want to leave him aching with desire, his pants tented over his straining cock, and I want to bring Anna to find him.

  “Hey!” he protests, and I ease my grip on him. He is trying to reach up between my legs, but the domino is too tight. I already hitched the thing up once today, to put the spare key in my pocket so Nikos could stay out all night; I don’t need to hitch it up again.

  I pull away, slowly, and slide my mask back over my face.

  “Callie,” he says, grabbing my hand. “Don’t say anything to Anna.”

  “I won’t,” I say, smiling. “It’s Carnival.” I hold my hand up in the air and shake the red beads. “Pact!”

  I wander out into the Plateia, dizzy from desire and wine, and start walking toward Aliki’s, not because I want to see her—or anyone—but because it is the only route I can follow without having to think. If I think, I will remember, and if I remember, I will have to think about what just happened. I walk a block before realizing my mask and hood are on. I would leave them on, an armor to disappear in, if I didn’t think I looked strange to the others on the street. It is too early for any self-respecting reveler to be walking away from the Bourbouli.

  I push the hood back and draw my hair out so that it spreads over my shoulders; the back of my neck is sweaty. A man coming toward me on the sidewalk gives me an approving look. Farther down Korinthou, a group of men and women are standing outside the door of an apartment building. The women are wearing cocktail-length gowns beneath coats draped over their shoulders. The men are in suits. As I pass, the buzzer sounds and they file slowly in through the door one of the men holds open. When I reach the corner of Korinthou and Agiou Nikolaou, I have to make a choice: continue toward Aliki’s apartment or keep walking. I head home.

  Grateful to Nikos for the key, I let myself in and take the elevator upstairs. I close the apartment door as quietly as I can but turn to find Aliki sitting in one of the living room chairs.

  “Hi,” I say, drawing up from my crouched tiptoeing.

  “Calliope, what’s the matter?”

  It suddenly occurs to me that my makeup must be smudged. I must look like a mess.

  “Nothing. I was just tired.” I smile.

  “And Nikos stayed.”

  “He said he’d be coming soon,” I lie.

  She tilts her head at me. I wince.

  “We got separated.”

  She laughs a single snort.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Aliki stretches and rises from the chair, her finger in her book.

  “It’s all right, Paki. It’s not your job to keep my husband on the straight and narrow. Come on.” She motions me to the kitchen.

  She moves a stool out of the way to close the door that is always propped open. I see now from the oven clock that it is just past eleven. To me, it feels as if it is the middle of the night—the kind of night you awaken from unsettled and upset without knowing why. Aliki pours us each a glass of Coke Light. I take a long drink of the stuff, slightly sweeter than its American version.

  “You were thirsty.”

  “I guess.”

  “So. Nikos. I bet he left you at the door.”

  “Pretty much. I didn’t see him at all once I got inside.” As soon as I say this, I wish I could take it back.

  “He finds a way of disappearing. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “Aliki, he’s not a bad guy,” I say, and she laughs again, more openly this time.

  “Did you think he was?”

  I make an equivocal gesture.

  “No,” she says. “He’s not a bad guy. Sometimes he does bad things, but he’s a good man.”

  “You should go to the Bourbouli with him.”

  “There’s no point in going unless I want to have a Carnival fling of my own. Been there; done that,” she says in English.

  I wonder briefly if it might be all right to tell her about Stelios.

  “I told you,” she says, refilling my glass. “He’s not the only one. It’s just—” She pauses, restarts. “It’s time to stop.”

  I look at her for a moment before asking a question I would never dare ask in broad daylight.

  “Do you love him?”

  She takes a sip.

  “Yes.” She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. “And I like our marriage and our responsibility for Demetra. We owe it to her to be good to
gether. It’s a good thing, marriage, Paki. It can be.”

  “I know,” I say.

  As I clean the makeup off my face in the bathroom, I think about what Aliki has said about Demetra. She must have known I would be glad to hear it—the parents taking responsibility for their child, turning their marriage into a safe space for a little girl to grow up in. Except that now it seems clear that Aliki has chosen to trade her own independence, her force of character, for her child’s happiness. Was that what my mother was trying not to give up, her force of character? Did the war make her need it more, value it more? Maybe I was the burden she couldn’t bear without losing some of herself.

  “You need more than a cotton ball, girl,” Aliki says, handing me a cleansing wipe she draws from a blue packet. “What happened to your face? Or do I not want to ask?”

  Now is not the right time. I don’t even know what I would say.

  “Just tell me,” she goes on. “Was it a bad thing or a good thing?”

  I know she is worried about me.

  “It was a good thing,” I say, but I’m not sure that it’s the truth.

  12

  Callie

  Wednesday

  Nikos has gone to work when I get up the next day, and I am glad not to have to face him. Demetra is in her room when I walk by, standing by a dollhouse in her pajama bottoms and a red long-sleeved T-shirt. I take a good look and realize it’s the large wooden dollhouse that my grandfather built especially for my mother. There is an artist’s studio on the top floor, where a tiny doll made to look like my mother stands among the props of her imagined futures: a tiny easel, a ballet barre, a little stage. None of those futures ever came, and neither did the dollhouse. During my childhood, the house was one of the many things my mother pined for but was told—by my father and others—that she could not bring to America because of the expense or the trouble.

  A blue sweater is draped over the roof of the house.

  “Do you not play with that anymore?”

  “Not really. I’m too old.”

  She pulls the sweater on over her head. Bits of woolen fuzz cling to the tiny shingles on the roof.

  “Maybe Theia Clio would want it back,” I say, trying to sound offhand.

  “She’s the one who gave it to me,” the girl says brightly.

  I take this in. I suppose here is the surprise I was looking for yesterday. My mother showing generosity to a little girl she doesn’t seem capable of communicating with.

  “There’s another parade today,” Demetra says, following me to the kitchen.

  “You going?”

  “Want to go with me?”

  “Demetra, go put some pants on,” Aliki says. The girl turns around and heads back to her room, grunting in dramatic irritation.

  “So,” Demetra says when she returns. “Come to the parade with us. It’s a musicians’ parade.”

  “What time?”

  “Eleven.”

  I look at Aliki.

  “I was hoping to talk to the lawyer today. Is there even a point in trying?”

  “Go now,” she says, “and maybe you’ll catch him.”

  “Then I’ll go with you, Demetraki, to the parade. I promise.”

  “Can this be our thing? You know, our thing that we do together, just you and me?”

  “Your aunt Calliope will be coming from the lawyer’s, Demetra. So I have to bring you,” Aliki says.

  “Well, then, you can leave when she gets there.”

  “I’ll stay.” Aliki tries to make it sound offhand. But I know what’s going on in her head. She’s not sure she can trust me to show up. And once I’m there, she’s not sure she can trust me to take care of her daughter. I don’t blame her. This is what a mother should do—stand guard over her kid to make sure she doesn’t follow bad examples like me.

  Aliki and I make plans to meet near here, on the corner of Korinthou and Agiou Nikolaou, at eleven o’clock. By the time I’m ready, I have to rush several blocks down Korinthou Street without getting anything to eat—which I soon regret, as I feel my dry mouth and my churning stomach.

  I find Constantopoulos’s name among the labels by the door of a ten-story building. Someone buzzes me in, and I ride a whirring elevator to the top floor and find a shiny wooden door at the end of the hall. It clicks open as I push, and I enter a reception room lined with blond wood and thick white carpet. I worry that a practice this successful won’t have time for my small concern.

  I announce myself to the woman behind the blond-wood counter; she acknowledges me only with a slight lift of her head. She returns to whatever she is doing for a moment, then calls into a phone for Constantopoulos.

  “Miss Braoun,” she says. “The American.”

  Constantopoulos sweeps into reception and takes my hand. He is around fifty years old, very tall and very thin, and he is wearing an elegant suit with cuff links made of a deep-blue stone.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Brown,” he says. “It is too early still. We won’t have the document until tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

  “But once I sign it, everything is done? I can dispose of the property as I wish?”

  “Oh, no,” he says, as if this is not an enormous problem. “It needs to be assessed by the tax authorities, and then you need to pay taxes on whatever is of value.”

  “But it’s nothing. Nothing of value,” I say, feeling a slight pang for all of Nestor’s treasures.

  “Nevertheless, we still must follow protocol.”

  More like you hope I’ll pay you off for not declaring the full value, is what I’m thinking, which is not going to happen.

  “Well, great. How long will that take?”

  “It’s difficult to say.” He pauses a second, as if to dispose of that issue. “I have the package for you now.”

  “What package?”

  “As we explained to your mother, Mr. Notaris left an envelope, to be opened only by you.”

  “My mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that protocol, Mr. Constantopoulos, to tell my mother?”

  He spreads his manicured hands wide.

  “She indicated that she had your authority.”

  This explains a lot. She figured she had to act fast, before I saw whatever was in that package.

  “I’d like this envelope now, please.”

  “Of course, we need to ascertain that there is nothing taxable within it.”

  I would kill Jonah if he took this tone with clients.

  Constantopoulos ushers me to his office and begs me to sit while he pulls a file from a credenza made of the blond wood that is everywhere. He lays the file open on his desk and turns a few pages of a document that looks puzzlingly familiar. It’s the paper. It’s the same foolscap that Nestor used for his list of song titles and that I used the day before to write up my rules. Suddenly I want to cry, picturing my uncle Nestor at his desk, drawing sheets of thin paper from the top drawer to write his last wishes. It hits me that I am failing him, the way I’m failing everybody else in my life. How can I possibly discharge his wishes, and how can I possibly sort through his things and sort out everything I have thought and seen and found and done in the last few days?

  “Here,” Constantopoulos says, handing me an envelope and a letter opener.

  I slice through the crinkling paper.

  Constantopoulos peers over. I hold the envelope open so that he can see, as I do now, that there is only what looks like one small sheet of paper, not the usual foolscap, inside.

  I open the white sheet and look down at loops of Nestor’s blue ink, but I can’t make out the handwriting. It seems messier than the writing I have seen on Nestor’s boxes and books, and I wonder, with tears welling, if it is because he was ill.

  “May I?” Constantopoulos says, seeing my difficulty.

  I nod.

  “Dearest Calliope,

  There is much more to say than I am able. And there are some things that are not mine to tell. But now as you look over what
remains of our lives, know that it is all there for you to understand. Remember that silence is not always the enemy and that what seems important now was once insignificant and will become so again.

  Your loving uncle,

  Nestor.”

  Constantopoulos clears his throat and I realize that I have been sitting there for a few moments.

  “Can I keep this?”

  “Now that it has been read, of course.”

  “Can I ask why you didn’t mention this two days ago?”

  “We are a large firm, Miss Brown. I apologize that it slipped my mind.”

  I restrain myself from a rant that won’t do any good. He puts the folder containing Nestor’s will away and aims a solicitous look at me.

  “We will have the Acceptance of Inheritance for you to sign tomorrow. If you return at ten in the morning.”

  He escorts me out, as if I were an unruly drinker at a nice restaurant. I make my way to the Internet café near Aliki’s to eat something. I could use a drink, but it’s too early, so I gulp down a coffee and a croissant. It all makes sense now. My mother knew there was an envelope for me; she didn’t tell anyone else about it in case they let me know; that’s why she kept snooping around Nestor’s house. She’s convinced he’s hidden something in there for me and whatever was in the envelope would tell me where and what it is. And that is absolutely what they were arguing about that day in the hospital.

  I rush across town and find Aliki and Demetra waiting for me on the corner of Korinthou and Agiou Nikolaou, as we have planned. Aliki is on her cellphone but closes it as she sees me coming. The air has turned balmy since I left this morning. Aliki is wearing a pale-blue gabardine coat over a blue-and-white-striped shirt. It is the brightest clothing I have seen her wear since I arrived.

  “I have lots to tell you,” I say.

  “Come on, Theia Calliope,” Demetra says, and takes my hand.

  “I’m coming!” I say, feigning exasperation. I make my arm go limp and let Demetra tug me along. I slow down every now and then to give her something to do.

  We can hear the parade as we dash down Agiou Nikolaou to where it crosses Maizonos. And then we see it: a long string of loosely formed bands wearing regional or national costumes. There are musicians from Crete, with black-fringed scarves tied around the men’s heads; from Epirus, with rich embroidered vests and skirts; and a German oompah band, whose men bravely wear lederhosen and feathered hats. When these pass before us—their songs distinct, then blending into cacophony—there is an enormous group of bongo drummers followed by a band of teenagers playing “Mamma Mia” on kazoos. Over all of this noise is the constant pulsing of the music from the city loudspeakers.