The Clover House (24 page)

I haven’t spoken to Stelios and Anna since Sunday’s drive out to the country, and I plan to keep it that way. If Aliki asked me, I would tell her I’d rather spend my free time with her. And though this is true, the reality is that I am embarrassed about the politics of that conversation in the field. Stelios’s charm notwithstanding, he made it clear he sides with Andreas, both of them criticizing me for things I cannot help. I’m so much closer to them than to any landed gentry.

And still I feel guilty—because of the safe farmhouse my family could retreat to once those bombs began to fall; because of the servants they employed; because of my mother, who gave cocoons for free to a little Italian boy. But all of these, even my mother’s adolescent
noblesse oblige
, involve a measure of kindness. By the time I reach Nestor’s house, I have worked myself up into irritation at Stelios and Anna for coming along with me only to set me apart.

In this mood, I stand in the foyer and scowl out at the room, resenting the obligation that has brought me to Patras in the first place. When I got back from that trip to Zakynthos, I finally had it all worked out—my thoroughly American life in Boston free from these European tragedies of property and class. I would pretend I had no mother, no history. Now I have history, with all its blessings—and its responsibilities. I like to think it was all much easier the other way.

I sit on the couch in Nestor’s living room, wondering why I can’t seem to leave the notion of Stelios and Anna alone. The world is full of couples like them, people who connect without obligation and who come and go without consequences. But there’s something about these two that fascinates me, and I don’t think it’s just Stelios’s good looks. I think that Jonah and I used to see ourselves that way, loosely tied, connected to each other only by proximity, our relationship tenuous and shifting. But the truth is that we couldn’t manage it. It wasn’t long before we understood ourselves to be more firmly tied, in love. We still held on to that looser image, though. It was the counterweight to the committed truth of our relationship. When Jonah proved the frivolity to be fake, I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.

I stand up too fast, and the room goes cloudy dark and then brightens again. Through lingering dizziness, I look out at the boxes. At this rate, I will never finish in time. I will have to either take all of Nestor’s things home or rent someplace in Patras to store them. Perhaps this was his way to keep me coming back to his city, to his life. This from the man who traveled all over Europe but always returned, going into and out of this little house with the foreign phrase on his key ring as the password. “Auld Lang Syne,” to days long since—days accumulated
in a life passed shuttling back and forth between home and away.

I fetch the Pti Ber package from the kitchen and look over today’s collection of boxes, pushing biscuits up with my thumb and eating them rapidly as I go. I start hauling boxes down from their stacks. A new set of rules emerges. I pull a sheet of foolscap from a pile in the center drawer of Nestor’s desk and write three columns.
Keep: tapes, film, photographs; important-looking papers; war years
. This last I underline twice.
Give away: clothes. Throw away: receipts and paid bills; anything plastic
. Most of the furniture will be for Aliki and Nikos, if they want it. After I’ve been working for a while, my throat is dry from the dust and my eyes sting. But I feel better. I am doing something productive to make up for my earlier delinquency. I have four more days to finish this work and get Constantopoulos to produce the document for me to sign. And—the thought nags at me—to find out what I can about the refugees at the farm.

I’m startled by a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” I say.

There is no answer. It has to be my mother again, refusing to shout through the door like a peasant, as she would say. I go to the door and find that I was right.

“What is it,
Mamá
?” I say, after we kiss on the cheeks.

“Do I need a reason to come see you?”

I want to ask her right away to tell me more about the refugees, but I hold back. Besides, I suspect it’s not me she wants to see. If I return to my work, I’ll find out soon enough what she really wants.

I go back to sifting through a box of papers, scanning each sheet for significant words and then flicking the document into one of two ragged piles.

“How long are you planning to stay here?” my mother says.

“I’m leaving on Sunday.”

“I mean here.” She waves her arm in mock grandeur. “Aren’t you going to the Bourbouli?”

I’m surprised that she knows about my plans, but, then again, she must have assumed that I would go to this key event of Carnival.

“Maybe not,” I lie. “Aliki’s not going.”

“So?”

“So I don’t feel like going alone.”

“If you want, I can stay here and do some of this for you.”

Clever woman.

“It’s okay,
Mamá
.”

I make a show of continuing to work, but my concentration is on her. She roams around the room, making disdainful noises. She lifts a stack of books from the coffee table.

“Those are sorted,” I say. “Can you please put them the way they were?”

“Sorted into what? You’re not keeping these, are you?”

I ignore the question. She finds the box of fruit pits that Aliki and I discovered on the first day. I brace myself for her reaction, half-fearing she will tip the contents out onto the floor. This keepsake at least slows her down. She lets out a long breath and gently replaces the cover on the box.

“From the farm,” I say stupidly.

Now it’s her turn to ignore me.

She resumes her gliding motion around the room and comes to the papers I have been sorting. Nestor’s correspondence with the head of an Austrian hiking club is on top of the keeper pile. My mother picks up one of the letters, glances at it, and flicks it toward the floor.

“Calliope! Throw this junk away. Why on earth are you keeping this?”

“Maybe I’m not.”

“Oh, come on. I can tell. This pile is lovingly arranged. The way you used to do with all your little things.”

My little things. These were my treasures—more often than not, souvenirs from summers in Greece, which were meaningless to anyone but me: a matchbox with a pretty cover, a bean-shaped pebble from Bozaïtika Beach, a ring purchased from the kiosk at Plateia Olgas. I used to keep them in talismanic arrangements on my nightstand.

“Can you just leave the stuff alone?” I say, feeling the familiar tightening in my neck. “I’m trying to get something done here.”

She has moved on. From the top of a bookshelf, she picks up a wooden carving of a bear standing on hind legs. Around the base are Gothic-print letters in German next to an image of the Swiss flag. She peers into the bookcase as she puts the bear back.

“What on earth was your uncle thinking? Such ugly things.”

“Is that fair?”

“Yes, it’s fair. Nestor isn’t above criticism just because he is dead.”

“Maybe he should be,” I say. “What do you care if Nestor wanted to keep that bear? Is it bothering you? Is it affecting your life?”

“He was my brother. Of course he affected my life.”

“I don’t see how he possibly could. You are clearly so far superior to him. Surely his poor taste can’t taint you.”

“That’s enough rudeness, Calliope. I came here to offer you some help.”

“Oh, come on! Who are you kidding? What is it that you want to find?”

She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and when she does speak, it’s in a suppressed seethe.

“I don’t know why you think you can speak to me like this. You learned this in America, where
everything goes
.” She says this last in English.

“No,
Mamá
. I learned it from you and Dad. Should I remind you?”

As I say this, I feel my heart banging in my chest. It’s exhilarating, but I’m also terrified—terrified that this tiny woman will find a way to make me regret my outburst. I take a breath and go on.

“Nestor did us all a huge service. He tried to make a record of the past. Maybe he wasn’t so good at editing the record.” I reach behind me for the first box I can grab. It is small, cardboard, with the bottom nesting in its lid. “So maybe we don’t need to have a box full of feathers from the farm. But at least he left something—for me—that was meaningful.”

My mother looks at the box in my hand. Inside it are four long black feathers.

“Where did you get that?” she says.

“Right here.” I wave behind me, caught up in my anger. “In a pile of Nestor’s crap. Why? Does it mean anything?”

“You said it yourself. Just Nestor’s crap.”

We glare at each other, saying nothing. I think of Aliki that time she was fifteen, staring my mother down in that argument at Olympia. Here is the defiance I always admired in her and saw again in that photograph. It’s in me now—uneasily but unmistakably here. But my mother, too, is defiant, even reckless, going so far as to use a word she considers vulgar.

“You always do that,” I say. “You always assume that if you
don’t value something, it
has
no value. You’re like that with everything.” I pause. “With everyone.”

“Who don’t I value?” She draws closer.

“Who?” My throat tightens. “Are you kidding? You don’t value me.”

“When did I say that?”

“I’m not going to talk about it,” I say, turning away.

“Calliope.” She grabs my arm and pulls me back around with surprising force. “When did I tell you I didn’t value you?”

“You don’t remember. Five years ago. I came to you before I went to Zakynthos. Like an idiot, I was hoping … I don’t know, that you might have something nice to say about my being alone.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being alone.”

“No?” I tug my arm free. “Then why did you tell me I would always be alone, that no man would stay with me, that no man could love me?” I stop for breath, and the last part comes out in a hoarse sob. “That
you
sometimes couldn’t love me.”

I stare at her, feeling the tears spill from my lids. I can see her thinking.

“I did say that,” she says finally. “That is true.” I spin away. “Come back, Calliope. Sit down.”

She points at Nestor’s velvet couch. Partly from weariness, partly from habit, I obey her.

“You are not always easy to love. People in love want to be close to each other. Not their bodies. Their thoughts.”

“I can’t listen to this.”

“You wanted me to explain,” she snaps. “I’m explaining.” She begins again, softly this time, but she won’t come nearer, staying instead in the middle of the room. “You don’t let people close. This
Iáson
, it’s a miracle he’s still with you. Or you’re pretending and he hasn’t noticed. But he will notice. I promise
you. Because when you don’t let people in, they eventually go away.”

All the energy suddenly drains out of me and I feel like a deadweight on the couch.

“Why do you think I don’t let people in,
Mamá
? Why do you think I don’t trust love? Over and over I tried to reach you, and did you ever let me in? No.”

My voice barely rises above a whisper, but I can see in her eyes that she heard me.

For a while we stay still, me on the couch, she a tiny figure ringed by Nestor’s boxes. The light changes in the room and I realize that the sun has dipped down below the back wall of the garden. Perhaps it’s been only a few minutes, or it could have been hours, the two of us frozen like Medusa’s victims.

I put my palms on my thighs.

“You know what?” I say. “I think I’m done for the day.” I press the lid onto the small box that has ended up beside me on the couch and set it on the table. My mother stays there while I go to the back doors and check that they are locked, stow the biscuits in a tin on the kitchen counter, and begin to switch off the lights. I pass her on my way to the foyer. She’s standing by the table where I set the box down.

“I’m locking the door,” I say.

“Very gracious, Calliope. I’m coming.”

She catches up with me as I button my coat and pick up my bag with its
domino
inside. The silky black fabric seems useless now. I am too drained to be seductive and mischievous.

When we reach the sidewalk, something makes me ask my mother the question I know she will say no to, so I ask it with a clipped voice, negation built in.

“You coming to Aliki’s with me?”

“I can’t. I have things to do.”

We kiss tensely on the cheeks, and I watch her start the short walk to her apartment. In the dark that has fallen, she looks vulnerable and frail.

“Mamá!”

She turns.

“Just come with me, all right?”

She considers for a moment, though I can’t really see her face.

“Fine. But don’t walk too fast. I have no intention of sweating my way there.”

I stand back from Nestor’s door, letting the glow from the streetlight fall on the lock. Arms extended, leaning back, I turn the key and hear the now-familiar chunk of the deadbolt being thrown across. I wait as my mother comes back, and we head off together at a graceful, loping pace. It’s clear we will not speak about what happened this afternoon.

On Maizonos, the cars are jammed, three lanes created where only two should fit. Motorcycles weave slowly through the cars, their rear tires swinging from side to side while the woman in the back—there is always a woman in the back—lurches against the driver.

“Is there some important event going on?” I ask my mother while we wait at an intersection.

“This is
rush hour
.” She says it with a disdain that’s aimed either at the English words or the thing itself, or both. “Patras never used to be like this.”

I buzz Aliki, hoping she’ll stay on the intercom so I can at least warn her that I’ve brought my mother with me. But no such luck. As soon as I speak, the buzzer sounds and I need to dash for the door before the lock closes again.

I hold the door for my mother, who glides up the steps as if into a ballroom. The elevator drops an inch or two when we step in and then jolts upward, metal rattling.