Blood Relations (5 page)

After his apology for hurting her, Sam would not speak of it again, as if such things could be forgotten. Then the troubles with Matthew had grown worse. Sam became so angry, so often, that he must have been relieved when Matthew left home, though he would not admit it. Sam had taken his death better than any of them, but he couldn’t pretend it had left him unaffected. Sometimes she could see the utter emptiness on his face, and it frightened her because she didn’t know what to do.

He had not divorced her, but he had left her in other ways. When he reached out for her in bed, she could have been anyone. Their lovemaking was performed joylessly, in silence. She felt old; betrayed. He was her husband, and he had abandoned her in his heart.

Where had all this begun? Dina was certain that each terrible event had a cause; nothing was random. Dina had once flown at Sam, striking him. It had been his sin that brought this down upon them. His adultery, ripping like a storm through their life, tearing it apart.

“Momma!” Her daughter’s thin voice came across the yard from the terrace.

Dina closed her eyes, hoping that Melanie would just go back inside. Instead, the voice came again. “What?”

Dina called back.

“Dad’s home, and dinner’s ready.”

She waved a hand. “You two go ahead.”

Melanie was fourteen and overly sensitive. Dina often had to force herself to be kind to her, although there was no reason not to be kind. Melanie was sweet; she was compliant. She kept her room clean, and her grades in school were average. She was not pretty, but neither was she plain. From time to time, Dina felt a wave of pity for her daughter. It was as if she had unwittingly poured everything she had into her firstborn, leaving so little for the second. Melanie was a shadow of her brother.

Matthew had been … beautiful. There was no other word.

Perhaps this was the fault. Dina knew the old warning.

If you are proud, if you say your child is beautiful, you make the gods jealous, and they will take him out of spite.

Matthew had certainly not been perfect. He had been demanding and hurtful. He had suffered and had caused those around him to suffer, and eventually he had been destroyed. But she did love him. Oh, God. She had loved him more.

Was it her own pride, then? Had she caused this? Dina squeezed her eyes shut. A cry caught in her throat. The pain was like a thorny stem dragged over bleeding wounds, tearing away new bits of flesh. She dropped the clippers and braced a hand on the brick walkway.

When she opened her eyes the sun was a red-orange flame in the trees. She looked down and saw she had clutched the cross around her neck. It was her grandmother Sevasti’s Orthodox cross. Dina had seen it in a drawer two weeks ago. Today she had put it on as a talis man, a last resort. For Sevasti’s courage.

Her grandmother had come to America in 1921 from a family of ethnic Greeks with a farm outside Constantinople-now Istanbul. At sixteen, Sevasti had seen her father shot dead and her mother raped by a Turkish soldier, then bayonetted. She hid in the barn, waiting with her father’s ax. The soldier pushed open the door and stepped into the darkness … then she split his skull. She ran for three days, starving and hiding, and finally crossed over to Greece on a fishing boat. She begged money from relatives for passage to America, not knowing what she would do when she arrived. On the ship she met a young man, Stavros Pondakos. By the time the ship docked in New York they were married. She went south with him to Tarpon Springs, a Greek sponge-fishing community on the west coast of Florida, where he had already secured work on a dive boat. They lived a long time, and had seven children.

Their first son, Dina’s father, was now dying in the worst way, losing his mind slowly to forgetfulness. His sister, old herself, took care of him now in the house on Spring Street. Dina had been reared in that house, two stories with gingerbread trim and a porch that wrapped around the side. There were white lawn chairs under oak trees hung with Spanish moss. Her father had built her a little boat, which she had mostly kept tied to the dock.

She took it out sometimes along the bayou, which led through twists and turns to the Gulf of Mexico. Dina hated herself for leaving: As the eldest daughter she should care for Costas, but she didn’t want to go back to Tarpon Springs; the town was too provincial and narrow.

Going back would be like exile.

Wincing against a new throb of pain in her breast, Dina shifted on the walkway.

She had, for a time, considered suicide, seduced by the idea, flirting with it as she brought the wheels of her car closer and closer to the shoulder of the road. She had poured into her hand all the pills that the doctor had given her. She had unlocked the cabinet where Sam kept his pistol and stared down at it, gray and cold and final.

Why hadn’t she done it, then? It was not fear of darn nation for an unholy act. Dina had not believed in damnation for a long time, not since realizing that there was more of it on earth than she thought possible in the hereafter. Dina didn’t consider herself Orthodox anymore, or a Christian of any variety. Sam had no answers, either.

His mother-long dead-had been Jewish, but he followed no religion.

If she took the pills or pulled the trigger, then what?

Nothing. Not even the awareness of nothing. It was much better, she had finally concluded, to remember, and have the pain of it, than to risk having nothing at all.

Dina blotted her forehead again with her sleeve, then picked up the clippers. She would finish trimming the border, then go in to dinner.

In the kitchen, Melanie got up from the table to check the heat under the pot roast. Then she crossed the kitchen to look through the sliding glass door a ain. Her mother was nearly at the end of the walkway. She would have to come in soon, Melanie thought. The sun was about to set. Her father was upstairs changing his clothes. He would be down in a few minutes.

Melanie had put glasses and plates on the counter, with linen napkins folded like fans, and the good silverware on placemats. She was hoping they could all sit down together. Nobody ate in the dining room anymore, even on holidays. Last year-forget it. Matthew had died in September, and Christmas had been awful. They didn’t eat at the kitchen table because it was piled with papers from her dad’s office, a TV to be fixed that had been there a month, and a bunch of mail. Plus her mother’s briefcase and a stack of tax books. Her mother was a CPA. She used to have a private secretary and her own office, but she’d been sick, and she was just starting back to work full-time.

Melanie had cleared enough space for her homework.

She slid back into her chair, nibbling on a carrot stick.

That’s all she would have, salad. Plus maybe a small piece of roast to keep her dad from asking if she wanted to make herself sick, or what. School would be out in three weeks, and all her friends were buying swimsuits.

She’d been working on a tan in the backyard, but her thighs were gross. Her mom had mentioned it last night: Melanie, you’re getting chubby.

A fist under her cheekbone, she read aloud, “Find the values of X where the value of the function of X is zero.”

She tapped the eraser end of her pencil on a piece of graph paper.

Without even opening the book, Matthew could have figured it out. He was awesome. He made straight As, till he started skipping school. Her mother had said Matthew needed a psychologist. Her dad said he needed a goddamn military school. He never did find out some of the stuff Matthew did, like shoplifting, because their mother handled it herself. Melanie knew only because she’d overheard them talking about it. In tenth grade he got suspended for smoking pot, and he told Melanie he would personally kick her butt if she tried it. Then they thought he was suicidal and put him in the hospital. He told Melanie it was an act, what he did, holding the pistol to his head like that. And he laughed. Damn! You should have seen the old man’s reaction.

On the graph paper, Melanie ticked off ten spaces above the intersection of the x and y axes, then four to the left. “I hate this. I fucking hate it,” she muttered.

Matthew used to come over and help her even after he moved out. He’d never finished high school. He failed his classes his junior year. Their father screamed at him for that and grabbed him by the shirt. Matthew tried to punch him, but he got knocked across the room. Then they both cried and hugged each other. But Matthew started staying away, and finally he moved to an apartment on South Beach. He became a model. Then he died.

Frowning, Melanie brushed aside some bits of rubber her eraser had left on the graph paper. This was useless, she thought. Totally pointless. She’d call somebody in her math class after dinner and ask how to do it.

In the backyard her mother stood up and pushed a piece of cardboard across the walkway with her toe. Melanie thought she would be okay when she came in. Usually she was nice; sometimes she could be a total bitch. At least she didn’t cry as much anymore. In fact, she hadn’t taken her pills lately either. There was a prescription bottle that Melanie kept an eye on. One of the girls at school, her mother had tried to kill herself that way. But this girl’s mother was an alcoholic and totally irresponsible besides.

Footsteps thumped on the stairs , and Melanie looked around. Her dad came into the kitchen in running shoes that looked like he had waded through mud puddles in them. An old towel hung around his neck. She was afraid someone would see him. He wore gray sweatpants cut off at the knees, and a T-shirt with a rip in the pocket. He was starting to get a stomach. He worked out, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. There was a fitness machine in the family room and some charts showing the daily reps he was supposed to do, but half the days were blank.

When he was in the army he jumped out of helicopters and ran for miles with an eighty-five-pound pack and an M-16, getting shot at by the VC. He used to tell Matthew about it. That’s what it was like in war, son, and that’s what it’s like in life, You have to be tough. Blah, blah, blah, And when their dad wasn’t watching, Matthew would catch Melanie’s eye and mouth the words, and she would nearly crack up laughing.

He walked over to the window, looking out.

She asked, “You’re not going running now, are you?”

“I thought so, before it gets dark.”

“There’s pot roast on the stove. It’s leftovers, but I added some more veggies.”

He was still staring outside. “How’s your mom

‘:All right, I guess.”

‘You guess?” He looked around.

“She didn’t go to her appointment.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. She got home about four-thirty and went right outside.”

He sighed, hanging on to the towel.

Melanie said, “She’s about done, I think. Then we can eat.”

Her dad turned his head toward the stove. “What do I smell?”

“Pot roast.”

,I’m sorry, you told me.” He came over and kissed her on top of the head and patted her cheek.

She said, “I put plates and silverware out.”

“So you did.” He left his hand on her shoulder. “It looks very nice, honey.” He let out a breath like he’d been lifting weights.

“Did you have a rotten day or something?”

He didn’t answer, then said, “We lost one. Jury acquitted on a first degree.”

“Oh. Too bad. What did the guy do?”

“Threw somebody through a sixth-floor window.” He turned her math book around so he could see it. “How’s school, Mel?”

“Okay.” Melanie knew that the murder must have been bloody and gruesome. He never told her about those, even if she asked.

He tapped the book. “Quadratic equations. I remember this.”

“It’s hard.” She looked up at him.

“Study the examples,” he said. “That’s what I used to do. If you don’t try it yourself, you won’t learn it.”

Lecture number 27, she thought. Which meant that he didn’t know how to do it either. She said, “Do you want me to serve the plates?”

He smiled. “Why not? Let me bring your mother in first.” He tossed his towel over a chair and went out the sliding glass door.

When Sam called her name, Dina glanced up. There Was a streak of dirt across her chin. He wiped it off with his thumb, then bent down to kiss her.

She smiled, tugging the ragged hem of his sweatpants.

“Look at us, Sam. We could be street people, the way we’re dressed.”

The gazebo was a few yards farther along the walk. He moved her straw hat out of the way and sat on the middle step. “How was your day?” He noticed that she wasn’t wearing her gardening gloves, and her nails were filthy and cracked. Before, she had been proud of her strong, beautiful hands. Before, Everything was divided into before or after, he had come to realize.

I had meetings all day and didn’t get anything done.”

She clipped a twig. The hedge was low and green with clumps of red flowers. It ran as straight beside the stones as if she had trimmed it with a laser l3earn. “And you?”

“All right.” Sam propped his forearms on his knees. He wanted to tell her about the verdict in the Balmaseda case.

Not for sympathy, exactly. Just to tell her. But he wasn’t sure how she would react.

Sam finally said, “You missed your appointment this afternoon.”

“Melanie’s tattling on me.”

“She wasn’t tattling. She’s worried about you. Why didn’t you go?”

“I didn’t feel like it.”

“What about next week?”

“Next week we’ll see,” Dina threw a handful of clippings into a grocery sack. “I went to church this afternoon,” she said in a tone that meant he was to ask her about it.

“What church?” They didn’t belong to a church in Miami. Dina went several times a year to the cathedral in Tarpon Springs, but never here.

“St. Sophia’s,” she said, “on my way home. No one was there, except for an old man dusting the sacristy. Then a woman came in to pray. She said the Lord’s Prayer in Greek. On the way out, I lit a candle for Matthew. I could feel him with me, Sam.”

Studying the pattern in the bricks at his feet, Sam debated whether to suggest they go inside. She had accused him, rightly, of not wanting to talk about their son. For months after he died, all they had done was talk about Matthew. Sam had run out of words.