Let Me Explain You (40 page)

She let Dina see her press the power button and then she put the device down when Dina opened the oven door. She expected it to be full of books, books about reclamation and healing and abandonment, or pages and pages of Dina's own writing, a diary that offered not explanations but some sort of inventory of excuses. Instead, Dina retrieved a pie, and Litza realized she had smelled something baking this whole time and had dismissed it as coming from the adjoining apartment. It was the most ridiculous thing to her, a pie in Dina's house. The few years she'd lived with Dina, never once had there been pie.

Dina used her fingers to scrape chunks of berry from the serving spatula. She delivered the plate, friendly. Filling was darkening under her nails, and she sucked it out. “Read the introduction, at least. Don't be shy.”

It was a careful pie, as if Dina had never spent generosity or tenderness on anything before the idea of pie came to her. Litza's slice, other than a small dribbling at the thinnest point, came out perfect. Litza imagined Dina crouched in front of the oven, looking on as the pie went from soft dough to baked, flaky crust, and wet filling from loose to firm. Dina baking pies day after day for the last ten years, getting it just right every time. It looked perfect, yet each time she started a new one, because it was not perfect, because Litza was not here to sample a blessing.

Dina liked how Litza was admiring it. “I can bake you your own, if you'd like. Which is more than your father can do.” She laughed. It was the workman's laugh Litza remembered from childhood.

All night, Litza had sat in the booth, burning candles across from her sisters. The candles were long, white, and they held them at the
pappas
insistence. Her sisters glanced up anytime a door opened, but Litza resisted and resisted. Litza focused on the wax, the way it spilled out of itself, made itself from itself, and stopped just before her fingers, just before she wanted it to. Her fingers scraped the wax until it clumped like fat beneath her nails. He did not come.

She had no intentions of eating the pie, but she was eating the pie. While her mind was back with the
pappas
in the booth, her mouth had started without her. The crust loosened into buttery silt. The filling warm enough to drink and the berries held up until she bit down. It was exceptional pie. Like folding up a silk purse and holding it in her mouth, the kind she coveted—then stole—as a child. She would have eaten more, if Dina had offered. She would have used her fingers.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

Dina's face flooded with gratitude.

“Who did you bake it for?”

“Myself,” Dina said. “My friends.”

Dina used the table to push herself up and went to the counter, where there was an unmarked white box, its corners taped. Dina opened a drawer and removed a black ribbon. She strung the ribbon along the top and then, without looking, ran it along the bottom. She knotted the ribbon, simple and clean, and then cut the extra at an angle. Litza had never seen Dina proficient at something like this, or at anything.

He did not come and did not come. Litza would have known, Litza the last awake in the booth, her candle squat and hobbled, grown older by disappearing. Mother had come for Ruby, but Litza and Stavroula stayed on with the
pappas
, which felt right. But then even the
pappas
fell asleep, Stavroula on his arm, his head back and his eyes closed. He was still, so still. Watching his chest barely rise, Litza took deeper breaths. His thin, matted hair. The skin on the back of his hand, more translucent than a wet napkin. She did not dare shake him. When the door opened—Marina coming for him—he opened one eye.

Dina sat, interlaced her fingers. “Stavros is a mean little cockroach. Trust me, I know him best. He's not going anywhere. But just in case.” She slid the box over. “You can take it with you, or I can bring it.”

“You're coming to the service?”

“I am the
executor
, aren't I?” She said it in the way of executions, which was confusing and creepy. Dina, always sounding off.

Litza stood.

Dina cut a second slice of pie and put it on the other ceramic plate. This piece was messier, broken at the bottom. She placed it on top of the box.

Dina said, “I should have said, when I answered the door, you look better than ever. I couldn't believe it was you. You look—healthy.” Her eye blinked furiously. Litza wanted to cup it with her hand until it stopped, but she felt the other would start up, and then she would need to cover her mother's eyes with both hands. She had not touched her mother in years.

Dina shut the door and did not look through the curtains, as she had when Litza first pulled up. Litza put the pie box on the passenger seat. The extra slice, the plate, she left that on the steps.

She touched the black ribbon. It was somber, but somehow festive without being offensive.

On the console between the seats was
To Live Until We Say Goodbye
. She stared at the cover for a long time, its glossy title. She turned, finally, to the page her father had marked with a business card. She had resisted it until now, believing he had intentionally marked it for her, then believing he had not. Neither was satisfactory. She did not want this passage to be some sort of explaining excuse, making up for everything. But at least it could try.

Litza's eyes fell a third of the way down the page—

 . . . she could express her rage, her sense of unfairness about the many losses that had befallen her, and where she could question God and express her rage without someone judging her or making her feel more guilty . . .

Dear Dad: What the hell are you leaving me with?

A foot-and-a-half-length of rubber hose.

We use a rubber hose because, first of all, it is inexpensive, is easily available, and can be tucked in any bag, can be used in any place. It also enforces the power in our arms when we feel like striking or hitting someone in rage and anger. If no rubber hose is available, it is very easy to take a bath towel and fold it, or, if necessary, we can use our fists. But with a rubber hose the worst thing that can happen is that we will end up with a few blisters on our fingers. . . .

By the time she was finished, the box was pulpy and crushed, the crust destroyed. The funereal ribbon, frayed and ripped away. Warm berry filling oozed onto the passenger seat. It was wet and darkening. Less like blood, more like smashed, very tiny organs.

Stavroula was not herself. She was wrapped in clothes that did not belong to her, and someone had covered her in a gray wool blanket. She was lying on a bed that felt like it was made of canvas, with a little bit of padding. A cot. She blinked until she understood that she was back in her father's office. That he had been missing now for four days going on five. That last night—just a handful of hours ago?—she had talked to a police officer who took down notes about her father's physical description, the last outfit he wore. She remembered being asked about her father's medical conditions, which she did not know. Afterward, Stavroula went through his medicine cabinet and found remedies for surprising ailments. High-cholesterol medication? Suddenly her father was an unwell man.

Her memory felt like a fish, and all she was left with was the cooked, blackened eye.

The diner was quiet, unnerving at three in the morning the night before her father's funeral. The diner had never closed before, not even on Christmas. It was dark now except for the bakeless light of the street lamps. She did not like waking alone in a place that was meant to be warm, filled. She imagined that this diner, exactly as it was now—solitary, unpeopled—was what the first few minutes of death would look like before her eyes adjusted to the afterlife.

Stavroula lowered herself onto the tile floor from the cot. She rubbed her arms through the sweater—her father's sweater. Mother had taken Ruby home, and Marina had taken the
pappas
home. Litza—Stavroula did not know where Litza had gone. Litza had stayed as long as Litza could. Stavroula was not mad. She just wished Litza had taken her along, too. Litza—was Stavroula remembering this right?—let Marina read her palm. Stavroula could only make out some of the words, because Marina was whispering them to Litza. Litza was listening intently. Stavroula heard,
Litza
mou,
what this line in your palm foretells is that you have been picking up stones for a long time now, and soon, after so many years, you will begin to build a castle of them, you are already building a castle, and soon Marina will stand on the highest tower, and nod in appreciation.

Then Marina read Ruby's palm, and it was a show; this
was
a spectacle—for the girls and the waitresses and the
pappas
, all of whom were drinking ouzo—Marina naming all the men who will try to take Ruby by the hand even with Mr. Dave in the way. “But Ruby will not give them the satisfaction. Ruby will say, No, Peter. No, Josh. No, Michael. No, Rick. No, Stavros. No, John. No, Joe Blow. Ruby will find her own path, Ruby will sacrifice what is necessary when the time is right, when she knows how to listen to herself as she truly is and not as she is imagined to be.”

Ruby read Marina's palm in turn and said: “I see a fat old lady who gets into everybody's business until one day she finally finds a boyfriend, somebody who doesn't give a shit about Greek food.” Marina took back Ruby's palm, claiming she hadn't finished: “Actually, I was wrong,
koukla
, the fates say for a little
poutanaki
like you, it will be Yes, Peter, Yes, Josh, Yes, Michael, Yes, Joe Blow.” They were laughing, getting loud and using their hands to talk over each other with their predictions; even Litza was playing, claiming what she foresaw was a fat old lady with
no
boyfriend, choking on a turkey bone.

Marina did not read Stavroula's palm; what she did, over the course of many hours, while the candles were burning, was to keep Stavroula in the corner of her eye. It was as if she were saying,
Your future is beyond me,
koukla;
your future is in your own hands.
Marina, at the end of the night, must have been the one to put the blanket on her but Stavroula could not recall this. Nor her walk, half asleep, from booth to office. What she felt was Marina grazing her arm with dry fingers, which felt like fish scales. Marina putting her to rest. Marina standing over her with an unlit but smoking candle, saying,
It was a very good menu. Not to Marina's tasting, but Good because it was Brave, and Brave is the deepest of all flavors to cook with.

The menu was here, next to her.

I would be proud to eat from this menu,
koukla.
Marina would be lucky to.

Stavroula's phone beeped once to remind her that a text had come through. She thought it was Litza. It was July, at three in the morning, saying .

She had texted July earlier to explain that her father was still missing. That she needed more time to sort things out. She was sorry. For missing another shift. July answered with sympathy and questions, but Stavroula didn't respond. She responded now .

In one hand, the fanciest food in the world: lamb ribs, uncooked, untrimmed, wrapped in parchment. In the other, the humblest: four eggs in burlap. Plus a bag of her own spices and cookware. She rang the doorbell. July answered the door wearing jeans, but it was clear she had just gotten out of bed. She hugged Stavroula around the packages, a sympathetic hug.

Stavroula followed her into a large, very white kitchen that masked its emptiness with plants and unopened bottles of wine. Down the center was a bar and on the other side, where the dining room began, were stools. The appliances were a microwave, a refrigerator, and an espresso machine. No knife block, no canisters of flour. The room existed as one large space for storing, not for making.

This was the closest they had ever been—this home, intimate space.

“You want to talk?” July asked. “I can make tea. Or get us some whiskey.”

“I prefer to cook.”

From her bag, Stavroula removed her own apron, a set of knives, twine, and a flowerpot. She washed her hands. She tied the apron.

July washed her hands, too. She said, “What do we do first?”

“We get to know the animal we're about to eat.”

Stavroula gestured with her knife. The lamb rack is a primal cut on the back between shoulder and loin. A hotel rack, she explained, is two joined racks. I used a band saw, split them from the chine bone. Then: American lamb is larger than New Zealand lamb, because it comes older to market. American is better. Then: Americans don't like their meat to taste like meat, they think cooking lamb smells like a peasant hut. But that's just an untrained palate. Then: No culture, no religion bans the eating of lamb. Lamb has evolved right along with man for thousands of years.

Then: This is my father's favorite meal.

July's pause. “We'll save him some.”

“Here, pull this,” Stavroula said. July did and, little by little, the fat gave way to the meat.

Stavroula showed her how to cut out the fingers of meat between the ribs. “You move the rib across the knife, not the knife across the rib. The meat is boat, the knife water. You want it under you, still, at all times.” She offered the knife to July, feeling self-conscious about her food metaphors, but also proud because they were honest. “You can't mess up. The bone stops you before you make any mistakes.”

July made fairly even strokes, and when she sawed instead of cut, Stavroula corrected her. Never touching her.

Stavroula lifted the flowerpot. It contained a cylinder spool. “Know what this is?”

“String?”

“Not string.”

“Thread?”

“Not thread. Thread's too fine.”