The Clover House

by Henriette Lazaridis Power

  “Silence is almost always the enemy,” Sophia says. “Here.”

  I pull the note from my bag and show it to the two old women. Sophia holds it while Thalia reads over her shoulder. Thalia wells up with tears and has to excuse herself for a tissue.

  “I can remember him as a little boy,” she says.

  Sophia smooths the note out on her knee, then folds it carefully into halves and then quarters. I wish she wouldn’t, but something about the deliberate nature of her movements keeps me from interrupting.

  I wait a little before asking both of them my question.

  “Do you know what he meant?”

  “There are some things Calliope should know, now that she’s accepted the inheritance,” Sophia says, handing me the folded note.

  “Time for that later, Sophia,” Thalia says. Sophia starts to say something else, but Thalia cuts her off. “So where are you off to?”

  Aliki blurts out, “Nafpaktos.”

  I look at her. Nafpaktos is a ferry ride away, east of the narrows that divide the Gulf of Patras from the Gulf of Corinth.

  “There’s going to be a bridge, Theia Calliope,” Demetra chirps.

  “Yes,” Thalia says. “Calliope should see where they’re building the new bridge. Big progress for our little nation, Calliope.”

  “Too much too fast,” Sophia says, her grim mood seeming to spill over all her thinking. “Who’s going to pay for this? The government will cook the books, and we’ll end up paying. You’ll see.”

  “Go,” Thalia says, steering us out of the kitchen with a roll of her eyes. “It’s too nice a day for such gloomy politics. Go and have a good time. Why not?” She turns to Demetra. “Say good night to your mother and aunt.”

  “Good night?” I ask.

  “Nikos and I are going to a party later. She’ll stay here overnight.”

  “I could have stayed with her.”

  “It’s all right,” Aliki says.

  “We don’t see her as often as you’d think,” says Thalia. “Or you either,” she says, squeezing my arms.

  Aliki kisses Demetra and sweeps me from Thalia’s hold.

  “Let’s go for that drive!” she says.

  We call goodbye from the hall on our way down the stairs.

  Her Fiat is trapped behind a double-parked delivery van on Kolokotronis, so I stand beside the little white car while she honks the horn in jaunty triplets. I am itching more than ever to get out, to go somewhere. Finally, the driver appears and gets in the van, moving off without acknowledging us.

  “Nafpaktos?” I say. “Where did that come from?”

  “I don’t know,” Aliki says. “I’ve just always liked it and I never go.”

  We crank down the windows as we poke along in midday traffic, but after a few moments we are on the road leading along the shore to the ferry landing. With a warm wind blowing our hair around, we drive beneath eucalyptus and sycamore trees, past a row of low whitewashed buildings and an abandoned swimming complex, before we reach the ruins of the medieval fort at Rio. We join a line of trucks and cars jockeying for position by the lowered gate of the ferry. We roll up our windows to keep out the pungent waves of diesel exhaust. A man at the head of the line is banging on the car hoods to tell the drivers where to go. This is not what I had in mind. I wanted to drive, fast, on an open road—to shake myself free from the mistakes I’ve made and that seem to be clinging to me like barnacles. Instead, I am stuck here, unable to move or to get out, and my errors and thoughts have had plenty of time to catch up.

  We park. The other cars are so close to us that it’s a tight squeeze to get out through the Fiat doors. The air is baking hot from the engines and the sun beating down on all that metal.

  “This way,” Aliki says, and leads the way up a staircase to the skinny deck that rims the car area. Here the breeze is blowing off the gulf, fresh and cool and salty. I lean over the side and watch the water churning turquoise as the engines back us out of the slip.

  “So, you want to tell me what’s going on?” Aliki gives me a little shove as she rests her elbows on the rail beside me.

  “Everything,” I say, buying time.

  Seagulls are making a ruckus above us, trying to catch the bits of bread a woman is throwing into the air. In the distance, I can see the mouth of the Gulf of Patras where it opens into the Ionian Sea. To the southwest is Zakynthos, hidden now by the mass of Peloponnesos; I think of my solitary week there so many years ago. This is better, to be among family, to be loved. Maybe Aliki was right: I do belong to them.

  “I did something stupid, Aliki,” I say. “God, I was so stupid.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but I feel relaxation in her shoulder and arm and take encouragement from that.

  “That guy I told you about?”

  “Stelios.”

  “I slept with him.” I will not tell her where. I can’t bring myself to admit that I had sex with a near stranger in my dead uncle’s house.

  “Ah. And Jonah knows this?”

  “He knows something’s wrong.”

  “He sounded fine enough when he called the house.”

  “No, he was pretty upset. He wants us to stay together.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It can’t be good now, when I’ve gone and slept with Stelios. You know something’s not right if I went and did that.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  I look at her, wondering if she and Nikos have been talking.

  “Not when I made the decision.”

  I’ve chosen my words carefully. It was a decision to sleep with Stelios, not an impulse, and she needs to know that. I need to know that.

  “Well, then! I can see why you needed to get away.”

  After a minute, she turns to face me. “Which is worse?” she asks. “That you slept with this Stelios or that you might tell Jonah?”

  “I have to tell him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the truth. What did Sophia say? Silence is always the enemy.”

  “Not according to Nestor. And you’d take relationship advice from an old woman who’s never been married?”

  “Maybe it’s better than relationship advice from an old man who never married.”

  “Point taken,” Aliki says. “But, if you don’t tell Jonah, you have a chance to fix things. If you do tell him, I’m guessing that will be it for the engagement.”

  “I can’t lie to him, Aliki.”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you want to go ahead with the marriage.”

  When Aliki says this, she knows she has hit on the only important issue here. It’s not about Stelios, or about sex, or about secrets. It’s about whether I want to stay with Jonah or not, whether I even can. Am I made for marriage? Am I good enough? How can I make that kind of commitment to someone else when I’m not sure I deserve it? Right now I feel I’d have to go farther away from Jonah than Greece to find the answer.

  We have reached the middle of the narrow gulf, near the third of four piers for the new bridge. From here I can see barges butted up against the piers and a handful of men at work on the concrete. In a few moments we will be on the other side and driving east along the coast to the tiny harbor of Nafpaktos.

  “What’s the party you’re going to? Isn’t there another Bourbouli?”

  “Friends from Nikos’s work. You’re more than welcome to come with us.”

  She must have assumed I would be going out with Stelios and Anna, but she is kind enough not to say so now.

  “And Nikos isn’t going to the Bourbouli alone,” I say. “How’d you manage that?”

  She gives me a wry smile.

  “It’s pre-Lent, remember? This is the week of the Prodigal. Nikos is Contrite, and I am Forgiving.” She stresses the words as if they were titles.

  She gazes out to the last of the four piers, just behind us now as we near the mainland.

  “It won’t be long before the
se ferries are gone,” she says, “and we’re all speeding across the gulf in our cars.”

  “That’s kind of sad.”

  “Not at all.” She shakes her head. “It’s progress, Paki. They’ll keep a ferry or two for those who don’t want to pay the toll, but the country’s moving on. Nikos and I plan to be on that bridge the very first day it opens.”

  My eyes sting as I hear her say this—the image of the two of them, Forgiving and Contrite, moving on into a shared future. I can’t say anything to her for a while, and she seems to sense this. We watch the boat’s wake curling a blinding white out of the dark-blue water.

  Nafpaktos is just a few minutes’ drive down a winding two-lane road along the coast. We arrive after the lunchtime rush and park on a side street running off the embankment road. We walk back to the almost circular harbor ringed by several tavernas. Their tables look out at the thick stone walls that reach out like protective arms from the jetties on either side. We find a spot by the seawall and order fish and fried potatoes and a salad.

  “Should we get wine?” I ask Aliki.

  “If you want.”

  I order a carafe of white, pretending that this hasn’t become an issue.

  We sit looking out at the calm water within the harbor and the white-dotted deep blue of the waves beyond. The Battle of Lepanto was fought here, I know, but I can’t remember against whom. I don’t bother to ask Aliki; I have had too much history for one day. It is a little too cool to be sitting outside, but we wrap our jackets tight around us and make do as the waiter brings us two plates of filleted whole fish and a salad bowl of artichoke hearts in oil and vinegar. The fries smell of olive oil and salt and crunch in our teeth.

  “This is nice, Paki,” Aliki says, reaching for her wine. “I wish you were staying longer.”

  “I didn’t tell you. I’ve changed my flight after all. I leave on Tuesday.”

  “Good! You’ll be here for Clean Monday.”

  “That’s not why. I have too much to do on Nestor’s stuff.”

  “And,” she says, pointing a fry at me with her fork, “you can put off going home to Jonah.”

  I concentrate on my fish, searching for bones. I take a drink of wine.

  “Aliki, did you notice anything funny about Sophia today?”

  “No, but I was doing stuff with Demetra.”

  “She kept getting all serious and saying things must be said.” I intone this last part.

  “What else is new.”

  “I found this box in Nestor’s house. I think my mother wants it, but she won’t talk about it.”

  “What’s in it?”

  I tell her about gathering the spilled contents of the upturned box and about my theory that somehow it and Nestor’s will and the photograph of the young man are all connected to my mother’s past. She shakes her head.

  “I don’t think it works that way, Paki. People’s lives aren’t that straightforward.”

  “This isn’t straightforward. I wish it were.”

  “Not straightforward, then. Clear. You’re assuming that these objects have an exact correlation to some event or some message from the past. But think of it. Most of us don’t even have clear lives in the present. How much more confused do our stories get when a few years go by? Or when we hand the stories down? Our mothers’ stories. They’ve been told so many times it’s a wonder they can still hold together. You use something that much, it’s bound to wear thin.”

  “You don’t believe our mothers’ stories?”

  “Sure I do. Just not as pure fact. They stopped being that a long time ago. Now they’re just good stories. Which is fine.”

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “If I thought I really could know, maybe. But I don’t think I can. So what’s the point? I’d rather talk with my mother about what Demetra did today, or about the parade yesterday, or about the liturgy for Forgiveness Sunday.”

  “You need to understand, Aliki, that it’s different for me. I don’t have a present with my mother. You know that. All I have—all I ever had—was her past. My whole life I’ve felt like I was listening for the rules of the game, waiting for her to give me the password to take me back to her childhood. Because that was the only place she ever wanted to be. But I could never hear what I was hoping for. It was as if she was standing at the mouth of a cave, telling her stories from there but keeping me from getting inside. Now there’s this box and she seems to care about it and it seems to mean something important. Maybe if I can figure out what it means, it will make a difference.”

  I drink more wine and stare out at the harbor, where a brightly painted fishing boat is making its way in through the arms of the jetties. Aliki sets her fork down and puts her hand on mine.

  “I’m sorry, Paki,” she says. “You should do what you think makes sense. Tell me if you need my help.”

  I shrug, self-pitying now. “It’s all right. You just have a different point of view.”

  I think about the missing drain in the basement of the old house, where this whole trip to Patras seems to have started. Shouldn’t that have been lesson enough that stories aren’t reliable, that memories shift like sand?

  I sit in the living room, pretending to read, while Nikos and Aliki are getting ready for their party. They exchange very few words and fewer glances as they come and go from the bathroom to the bedroom to the hallway mirror. Still, they don’t seem tense. It is instead as if they have returned to a familiar orbit, Nikos revolving around his wife with just enough separation from her to avoid being sucked in.

  “You’re staying in?” Aliki asks, but it is a reminder, not a question.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” I give her a tired smile. I almost tell her how much I’m enjoying watching the two of them get ready, basking in their quiet contentment.

  Nikos is in his tux again, and Aliki has put on a cocktail dress of green satin with an empire waist that makes her look taller. Around her neck is a choker with a large topaz at its center. She sees me looking at it.

  “My mother’s,” she says, touching it briefly, as if to make sure it is still there.

  “Aliki, the ring I told you about. It’s topaz.”

  She raises her eyebrows.

  “Sophia has a bracelet,” she says. “Topaz. Yiayiá gave one to each daughter.” She is animated now. “Of course: Mamá had the necklace, Sophia had the bracelet, and Clio had the ring. That’s your mother’s ring, Paki. I bet that’s what she wants and she thinks it will sound greedy to ask for it.”

  “So what’s it doing in Nestor’s box?”

  “Find out. There’s your assignment.”

  I think of all the other things that have ended up in houses other than my mother’s. Has this ring, like those objects, been taken away? Or has it been given?

  “See you later, if you’re up,” Aliki says, throwing a garnet wrap around her shoulders.

  “You look gorgeous, you know.”

  She smiles back at me.

  I read for a while once they are gone and then switch to television, surfing through old Carnival footage to a rerun of Law & Order dubbed into Greek. But the emotions of the day have exhausted me, and even my thoughts of the three topaz stones scattered among the sisters can’t keep my eyes from closing. I am on my way to bed when the phone rings and I answer it.

  “Callie!”

  I freeze at the sound of Anna’s voice.

  “Where’ve you been all this time?” she says. “Come out with us.” I wait for sarcasm in her tone, but she is cheerful and sincere.

  “Where are you?”

  I hear music and shouting in the background.

  “The Bourbouli. Come meet us in the square. You shouldn’t miss the Bourbouli. The Bourbouli is the best part of Carnival.”

  She is drunk. For a moment I envy her, imagining the sweet release of intoxication.

  “I can’t,” I tell her. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Stelios wants you to come. And Maki and Andreas. We want to sh
ow our American friend what Carnival is all about. Here, wait.”

  The phone rustles and then Stelios’s voice comes on the line.

  “Did you hear that?” he says. “She wants you to come.”

  “She has no idea about last night, does she?”

  “I told you. It’s all right. She wants you to come.” He lowers his voice. “I want you to come.”

  “Forget it, Stelios.”

  “I’ll make you get off,” he goes on, “right there at the Bourbouli.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “We could do that too.”

  “No,” I say. “Fuck you and don’t call me again.”

  I hang up and stand by the phone, bracing myself for another ring. After several minutes, there is still no call, so I go to bed. They will all have gone into the Apollon Theatre now and paired off with people they do not know and whose faces they cannot see.

  I’m drifting into sleep when I hear noises coming from the foyer. Sitting up, I realize that the sound is coming from outside the apartment, and it’s a man’s voice speaking softly while he seems to fumble with the lock.

  “Hold on,” I grumble. Nikos must have lost the key, and I’ll be able to get back at him tomorrow about how much he had to drink.

  Hoping to stay half asleep, I don’t switch the light on but just open the door and head back to bed. Someone yanks my arm back. I turn, ready to yell at Nikos, but it’s Stelios who is holding me by the upper arm, twisting my skin.

  “Stelios, what the fuck?” My voice comes out like a stage whisper.

  “Is that a nice way to greet me?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to see you, Calliope. I couldn’t stay away.”

  He’s still holding on to my arm and now grabs my other one, pushing me farther into the apartment. In the light from the street, I can see that he’s moving with the looseness of alcohol, though his gaze is focused, intense.

  “So here’s another Notaris property. Let’s have a tour.”

  “Stelios, you need to leave.”

  He looks around quickly. “You’re alone, aren’t you? Family left you behind?” He pulls me close, pushes my hair off my face. “That’s all right. More room for us.”

  “I told you we were done, Stelios.”