The Clover House (31 page)

If my mother did indeed fall in love with a refugee—with the handsome young man in the photograph—what could these objects have to do with that? Did he give her this ring? Was she wearing that dress? And how did it get so dirty? I picture a teenage Clio rolling in the dirt with a young refugee and shake my head. The image doesn’t fit.

The phone rings and my ears tingle, as if the sound were a solid object pushing into my head. I go to pick it up, irritated already at the thought that my mother is hounding me.

“Tí?”
I say—What?—before I notice the click and hiss of a transatlantic phone call.

“Cal?”

“Jonah.” I exhale a long breath.

“Your cousin gave me this number.”

“I’m at my uncle’s.”

“I know.”

“What is it?”

“Well, Cal, I got your email.”

“Okay.”

“About what you said, about how maybe it’s not enough—”

“Jonah—”

“Just wait. If we stay together, I’ll be happy to listen to anything you want to tell me. I said that when you left and it’s still true. But right now, I have to talk.” He pauses and I force myself to wait. “I don’t like your silences,” he goes on. “They’re not good for you and they’re not good for us. But I love your stillness. Without you here, I feel like I’m making stupid, meaningless noise all the time. You are always so still, so centered. I love you, Callie. And I don’t want to play around anymore.”

I don’t know what to say. Jonah’s words are so beautiful, so peaceful. That’s the overriding sensation I have, listening to him: peace. But it feels as if that beauty and quiet exist in a glass room I’m not allowed into. Or, actually, a glass room that I’ve shattered with what I did the night before. Jonah’s idea that I’m still and centered seems so wrong to me. So utterly wrong that I wonder how he could love me and not see the truth of who and how I am.

“Aren’t you going to say something?”

I know what I should say, but I’m too afraid to say it. All I want right now is to postpone the moment when it all comes apart.

“I don’t know, Jonah. It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

“But?”

“I don’t think we can talk about this over the phone. You’ve had time to go over all this. But I feel like I’m drowning in other people’s lives. There’s so much family stuff to understand here. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time, with my mother, and Nestor, and everything. Can we talk about it Tuesday?”

“I thought you were coming back on Sunday.”

“I need to stay longer.”

“Were you planning to tell me, or was I supposed to find out when you didn’t get off the plane?”

“I was going to call.”

“Callie, you’ve been gone since last Wednesday and all I’ve gotten since you landed is one phone call and one email. I know we weren’t talking a lot before you left, but I didn’t think we’d gone into radio silence.”

“It’s busy here. And there’s the time difference.”

“I know all about the time difference, Callie.” I wince. “I know how that one works. Why do you need the extra days anyhow? What the hell have you been doing all this time?”

“Don’t swear at me, Jonah.”

“Look, I’m sorry. But you know, Cal, I’m trying to make a life. With you.”

“And isn’t that what we said we needed to think about? I told you I want to wait until I get back. We can’t be talking like this on the phone.”

We are both silent for a long time, listening to each other’s breath and to the crackle of the line.

“Jonah, you can’t be all understanding about my coming here and taking some time and then get mad if you get to the answer before I do.”

“Who said I was all understanding?” His voice is weary. “What was I going to do? Stop you?”

“Jonah.”

“Yeah?”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“We should probably hang up.”

“All right, Cal,” he says, and his voice croaks with tension.

“You want my new flight info?”

“Sure.”

I tell him the number and the arrival time, and we say goodbye.

I feel sick to my stomach. I sit there by the phone for what seems like hours, moving only to hug my knees and press my forehead against them. If I could stay like this, it would be all right. If I could never have to make a decision, never have to take a chance like this on another person—or let that person take a chance on me—it would be all right. When I finally do get up, I am trembling as if Jonah and I have had a shouting match. I look at the clock and see that it is almost twelve-fifteen, which means that Jonah called just after five in the morning. At the thought of him sitting in the dark apartment, just risen from a bad night’s sleep, I feel my stomach churn. I go to the bathroom and wait to vomit, but nothing comes. I deserve this.

I need to get out. Out of Nestor’s house, out of the city. I am startled to find the air warm outside. I walk fast to Aliki’s house, feeling sweat roll slowly down the back of my neck.

When she hears my voice over the intercom, she buzzes me in, but I wait and ring again.

“Aliki!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Come down and let’s go for a drive!”

“Now? Are you all right?”

“Come on. It’s warm out. Let’s just go. I need to get out,” I say. “I’m going crazy.”

“Wait.”

The intercom clicks off and then back on.

“Callie?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We’ll leave Demetra at my mother’s and we’ll go. But not for too long.”

“Fine.”

We walk the few blocks over to Thalia and Sophia’s apartment, holding hands with Demetra, who swings between us on each rapid step. I try to let the girl’s lightheartedness rub off on me. Aliki lets us into a lobby strewn with flyers and leads the way up two flights of stairs that wind around an old-fashioned elevator shaft. The cage-style elevator drifts down past us with an old man inside.

“
Geia sas
, Mr. Stoukidis.”

“
Geia sou
, Miss Aliki.”

Aliki knocks and, hearing Sophia call through the door, unlocks it and steps aside for Demetra to push through. The girl is swept up by her grandmother and great-aunt, who take her into their kitchen for something to eat.

“Did you sign it?” Thalia asks me.

“This morning. Nestor left me a note,
Theies
.”

“What did he say?”

“That silence is not always the enemy, and some other things.”

“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 these ferries are gone,” she says, “and we’re all speeding across the gulf in our cars.”

“That’s kind of sad.”