One and Only Sunday

by Alex A King

  "I don't know."

  Kiki shuts her eyes, shoots for that invisibility thing, but Mama's got her own magic. Doesn't matter what her daughters are doing and where, Mama has a way of knowing.

  Not every mother is a god. Just the Greek ones. What they don't know, they think they know.

  "She does not know!" her mother declares. "You agreed to go out with him and you do not know?"

  "It's not a date."

  "If you go out with a man, it is a date, unless he is your brother or cousin—"

  "If it is a cousin it can still be a date," Yiayia chimes. "I went out with a cousin once. And your mother—"

  "Ignore her," Mama continues. "If people see you, they will talk."

  Is Mama high? Doesn't she listen? "They're already talking!"

  "They will talk more." She punctuates with her needle. "And the things they will say will be worse—much worse. Already they think you killed Stavros, but if you go out with this Leo they will call you an adulterer, too. They will not see thank-you. All they will see is you with a man who is not your dead fiancé. Then what will you do, Kiki? When it gets back to Helena, what will you do, break her heart some more? Stavros's death and her belief that you killed her son have ruined my friendship. Helena and I have been friends since we were children. And now that is gone!"

  "For once, your mother tells the truth," Yiayia says. "Listen carefully because it will not happen again."

  "Skasmos!" Mama barks.

  "So what, am I supposed to crawl into the grave alongside Stavros to prove devotion I never felt for him?"

  "That would be a good start," Mama says, but it is too late now."

  "Then tell me, what do I do now?"

  "You go back upstairs and stay home." Stab, stab with the needle. "No men. No going out. You stay there until people forget or the police decide someone else killed Stavros. That is what you do."

  Kiki deflates. A night out sounded like fun, but Mama pricked the balloon. Now she wants to go upstairs, climb into bed in her black dress, and sleep.

  Baba lowers the newspaper. "Go," he says, "and have a good time. You have not had a good time in too long. Stavros is dead. Staying home will not bring him back and it will not make you happy. Just because he is dead, does not mean you have to live like you are dead, too."

  "It is about respect!" Mama glares at her husband.

  "Respect," he scoffs. "What respect do they show our daughter, eh? Everybody in town knows Stavros was a philanderer. How was that respectful to our daughter? And when people talked about his bad behavior, how were they respecting our daughter? That marriage was your idea, not mine."

  Holy fatherly intervention, Batman! Kiki wants to cheer, but only a stupid person would jump into that volcano.

  "But you loved Stavros!" Mama cries.

  Baba scoffs at that. "I did not love him. And I did not love him for my Kiki. She deserves a much better kind of man."

  A cobra rears back before it strikes, and so does Mama. When she lurches forward, it's with a single steel fang. She drives the needle into the thatched fabric.

  When it comes to her husband, her protests are small. Why waste drama on the man, when she can save it for somebody who can be more easily crushed

  "Kalispera!"

  Leo.

  Salvation and damnation in one. The man looks like the devil, but his eyes are soft, kind. Her eyes want to stare, but her common sense kicks their ass. Greece is filled with hot men, so Leo's nothing special, is he?

  No.

  If she had her way, she'd be dragging him down the street, away from the snake pit, but her father is already out of his chair, slapping Leo's back, shaking his hand.

  "I know your father," he says. "Lefteris and I were in school together. We did terrible things when we were young."

  "Of course you did," Mama mutters.

  "How is your father, your family?"

  "They're great," Leo says.

  "Are they well?"

  Anyone else notice the pause in his delivery, or just her?

  "They're well."

  "Tell your father I said hello, eh?"

  Eyes focused on her needlepoint, Mama's voice gets ready to drill. "Where are you taking my daughter?"

  "I'm taking Kiki on a picnic."

  "At night? Who goes on a picnic at night?"

  "Mama, enough," Kiki says. To Leo she says, "A picnic sounds great."

  A picnic. The two of them alone.

  Leo's brave going anywhere with her fingers.

  54

  Leo

  Houses everywhere. Hulking, squatting behemoths where the church and its grounds used to sit.

  Leo laughs, because what else can he do?

  "Greece moved on without me."

  "Did you think it would stay in stasis, and all of us along with it?"

  "Have you ever seen Brigadoon?"

  Kiki shakes her head. "No."

  "A couple of American tourists in Scotland discover a village called Brigadoon. It's only there for one day every hundred years. In between, the village vanishes and its people sleep. Agria was my Brigadoon, until I got back."

  "We haven't been sleeping. We've been living and loving and dying without you."

  "I know." He flashes a smile at her. "So. I don't have a Plan B."

  "Lucky for you all my plans are Bs. I know a place we can go."

  55

  Kiki

  Good thing she's a resourceful woman—a resourceful woman with a key.

  Arms loaded with two white boxes, a plastic bag looped around one wrist, Leo laughs. "The high school?"

  "The high school."

  "Is there going to be homework?"

  Her turn to laugh. "Just get inside before someone sees us."

  "Who's going to see us?"

  Nobody, that's who. But Kiki is all kinds of paranoid. Which is why they're standing at the high school's back door. The double doors out front sit in plain sight of two residential streets. But the school's backside butts up to nothing but trees, bushes, and a small dirt road that winds past an abandoned half-built house before spilling into an asphalt artery.

  "Around here, you never know."

  "Sounds like the NSA," he says.

  "I don't know what that is, but it sounds Greek."

  Inside there's nothing but silence. When she closes the door behind them, it's as if they're sealed off from the world and all its noise. She only knows this place filled with the constant tapping of soles on marble, the chatter of students as teachers flit from class to class, toting lesson plans and textbooks.

  Empty, she and this building do not know each other.

  Leo's reading her mind, because he says, "In American schools it's students who move from class to class, not the teachers."

  "What was it like, leaving here, moving to America?"

  He shrugs. "It was a long time ago."

  Oh yeah, there's a story there. But what's it to her? Leo owes her nothing. She doesn't have a right to hear his stories, just because she helped him with some paperwork.

  "That's the good thing about life," she says. "Even the bad stuff gets left behind, sooner or later. Do you want a tour? I know someone who can give you one."

  "I can guarantee the only thing that's changed about this place is me."

  "Come on, then."

  She lifts one of the boxes out of his arms, heads for the marble stairs. When they reach the second floor, she leads the way down the hall to a smaller staircase hidden behind a metal door. Up the stairs, until they burst out into the dying light.

  They're on the school's flat roof, along with the solar panels that keep its motor running.

  The view from up here is really something. Laundry pinned to clotheslines on other, lower, roofs. An old man peeing against a wall. Two women, three children, rubbing corn off cobs in their front yard. After a few ears, Kiki knows your thumbs turn red and numb. Then your mind quits dishing out mercy, and the fire comes.

  At one of the houses a party
is full tilt. A man holding a handkerchief dances on his own, until he is joined by another. Soon the family has formed a dancing chain. They move with a fluid synchronicity—mostly. There's a wild beauty to the dance, and even the dancers with no rhythm don't detract from its charm.

  (It's not often you meet a Greek with no rhythm, but once in a while, they happen. What they lack in skill they make up for with enthusiasm and comments about how the gods wish they were this talented.)

  "Looks like fun," Leo says.

  Does he mean it? She can't tell. "Nobody has more fun than Greeks. Just ask us." She smiles. "This is Greece—the real Greece. The view you see from Pelion's villages, that's the catalog copy. It's how we sell our country to tourists. But if you want to know Greece, here is where you come." She nods at the formerly pissing man who has turned his attention to shooting snot. "It's as ugly as it is beautiful."

  Side by side, they lean against the school's top lip. Between them stands an invisible wall, a respectable wall. Kiki is glad it's there. Leo radiates something Kiki wants—needs—but he's temporary.

  Oh look, there's a conclusion, and Kiki jumped right to it. Well done, she tells herself. For all she knows, the quiet hum of potential she feels is one-sided.

  "I remember," Leo says. He turns his head just a fraction, enough for her to see his smile is meant for her. "Leaving here sucked at first. Greece was all I knew. Unless you count a few vacations to the states to see my mom's family. Everything got left behind. Most of our stuff. All my friends. But it didn't suck long. As soon as we got on the plane I decided it was an adventure. Not a tree-climbing, dirt-digging adventure. A real adventure, into an almost unknown place. Man, it was great!"

  "Why did you come back?"

  He laughs. "I wanted to join the army."

  One eyebrow raised, she asks, "Really?"

  "No. After my divorce, I figured I'd see Europe. And last time I checked, Greece is still in Europe."

  "I'm sorry …"

  "I'm not. Tracy is a good woman, but we weren't a good match. I'm out of here tomorrow," Leo says. He looks down at her with those dark eyes. They're warning her that there are rough seas ahead. "Have to go to Athens and deliver those papers in person."

  "I hope they approve your request."

  "Thanks. I want to swing by and see you before I go."

  "For that fax?"

  "For that. And to say goodbye."

  She moves on without him, but he follows as if they're tethered. He leans over the lip, laughs at a pair of teenagers making out in the alcove below.

  "Remember—" he starts.

  "No."

  "I didn't finish."

  "You don't need to."

  "So you do remember!"

  "I was a kid."

  "So was I."

  "You looked like a man, even then."

  "Man on the outside, kid on the inside. I was pretty though, wasn't I?"

  "You were pretty," she admits. "Why are you in such a hurry to get home?" Way to change the subject, Kiki.

  "Family stuff."

  "You said that already."

  The feverish teenagers below break their seal, glance up. Leo grabs Kiki, pulls her down with him so they're both crouching. For a moment, he's as silent as marble.

  When he speaks, it's in a low voice riddled with hairline fractures. She's reminded of an ancient vase, trapped in a museum. "My mother's sick. The kind of sick that doesn't magically get better. I don't want to say my goodbyes over the phone."

  Now is the perfect time for a woman to take a man's hand and swear a caring allegiance. But Leo is one small step up from a stranger. She has little to give him.

  Except the truth as she knows it.

  "Earlier you asked me what it's like when someone you love dies—remember?"

  "Yeah, I remember."

  "I lied," she continues. "The truth is I don't know."

  He blows his breath out in one long stream. "You didn't love your fiancé?"

  "No. And time wouldn't have changed that, I don't think. We knew each other since birth. That's plenty of time to fall in love, but it never happened. And after our childhood, we weren't even friends anymore. So I don't know what it's like. But I'm sorry that you will know."

  She doesn't take his hand. But there's something about Leo, something that tells her a hand isn't everything to this man.

  * * *

  "Like it?"

  Full mouth, so she nods. When the food scoots down her throat she says, "What is it?" Because—Virgin Mary!—it's delicious. The bacon's crisp, the tomatoes sweet.

  "BLT. Bacon, lettuce, tomato. It's an American thing."

  She inspects the half-eaten sandwich. "It's so good I'm surprised we didn't invent it."

  The sun's leaving, but Leo keeps her warm with his laugh. It feels good to be with him. It feels free.

  A dangerous, tantalizing thought.

  Leo says, "Greece: the birthplace of civilization and everything else."

  "We do have kind of a complex."

  "The expats are worse. We put Greece on a pedestal when we leave. No place is better, more wonderful. All the people are friendly, it's more beautiful than anywhere. The food is the best.

  "What's wrong with that?" she says, deadpan. "It's all true."

  "Shut up and eat the sandwich. I slaved in the kitchen for hours making that thing."

  Now she's a puddle of laughter and tears. Her mascara runs for the border, but she catches it with the back of her hand, smears black across her cheek.

  It doesn't matter. This isn't a date.

  It's just two people sharing what she hopes will be a secret.

  56

  Helena

  Helena saw that … putana Andreou woman with that man. Seducing another one the way she seduced her Stavros.

  "She was cheating on him—I know it," she mutters.

  Kristos lifts his head from the pillow. "Who?"

  "Kiki! Who else?"

  "Kiki was not unfaithful. She is a good girl."

  "Then why was she with a man?"

  "Maybe he was a friend. Why are you following the poor girl?"

  "I know Kiki's friends. I know Kiki."

  "Then you know she was not unfaithful to our son."

  Betrayal wears many faces. Tonight, it wears her husband's.

  "Maybe you are right," she says.

  We will see.

  57

  A small aside

  Helena's eyes are not the only ones watching Kiki Andreou live.

  58

  Leo

  Morning moves sluggishly into Agria, dragging its peach and gold train. Leo and his grandfather are already out on the patio when the roosters start hollering at the sky.

  "What does Laki have to say this morning?"

  The old man taps the statue's head—the big one. "He says that tsiganes burned the police station."

  "Did you tell them?"

  "I called them. But did they listen? No. If that Detective Lemonis's father was still alive, he would believe me. But his son is a kolos."

  Leo has never met the guy, so he can't judge if he's an ass or not.

  "Kiki thinks they'll pin that on her, too."

  Papou makes a small tsst sound. It's Greek shorthand for 'No.' "For that, no. But other things, yes. Good thing she is a strong girl. Being unhappy in love has tempered her. Everybody should be unhappy with love at least once in their lives."

  "Were you unhappy?"

  "No! I was too happy." He nods at the happy, happy statue. "Like Laki here."

  "It's good Yiayia made you happy."

  "Your grandmother, Kiki's grandmother, a lot of grandmothers—even a few great-grandmothers. A lot of women contributed to my happiness. Your grandmother was the last and the longest."

  Leo laughs. You go, old man, he thinks.

  "When will you come back?" Papou asks. "It is good to have you here. The rest of the family, they drive me crazy. But not you."

  "Doesn't Laki know?"

&nbs
p; "No. He prefers to tell me about women."

  "I don't know," Leo says. "I don't know how long—"

  How long it will be before Mom dies.

  How long it will be before it's okay to leave Dad and Soc.

  "I still have a business to run," he continues.

  "You could run it here. Agria needs a good veterinarian. We have one, but he is also a doctor. Always he wants to put the thermometer …" He mimes shoving something up his butt.

  "I have a life back there." Yeah, he says it, but even he can hear his words are pliable tin, not steel.

  "Work is not a life."

  "It is when you've got nothing else."

  Silence.

  Time drags its legs around the clock.

  "Let's go, eh?" The old man slaps the table, two-handed. "You do not want to miss your bus."

  "I have to see Kiki first. She's got a fax for me."

  Papou's gold teeth flash in the sun. "Is that what you call it?"

  59

  Kiki

  Kiki can't help reading the fax. Not because she's Greek, and therefore terminally curious, but because she's human. It's not as though she had to steam open an envelope. The school's machine burped the whole thing out in flat, readable pages.

  Leo's mother has cancer, and she's going fast.

  Now she feels like an unclean thing that has tainted something sacred. She shouldn't have looked. This is Leo's business, not hers.

  She slides the papers into a yellow envelope, unfolds the metal butterfly wings to seal it (temporarily) shut.

  This morning, the school feels even more empty than last night. Turning in a slow circle in the atrium, she wonders if she'll be here when this great white lung draws its first September breath. What's she going to do if that call from the principal comes, and he tells her that Kyriaki Andreou is no longer the school's English teacher? Teaching is all she has ever wanted to do. Where do teachers go when they're no longer teaching?