The Secret Sister (5 page)

Sakis chose to stay at the Plaza. It was his first time in New York.

“Nice apartment, uncle,” Sakis said on the one and only time he came to our house, “and in a first class neighborhood too.” He'd heard that Riverside Drive was a good part of town. “You've made a bundle, haven't you, uncle? Fortunately, your cousin Seraphim has his health and he's lived to see me do pretty well for myself, although he is a little weird and doesn't quite get me, he's a little stuck in the past, but he's okay, he makes me laugh despite his eighty years, you know what that can be like, of course, you folks are lucky, living here in the center of the universe!” Grandpa listened to him, looking lost. As if he were trying to understand things that were beyond him. “And life has changed for the better now, uncle, you won't recognize the old country. You can't imagine the construction going on, and if one day we get to hold the Olympic Games, and it's very possible that we will, uncle, then you'll see development and progress like you won't believe! We won't recognize our poor old Greece! Wouldn't it be a good idea for you to come and visit after all these years?”

I saw Grandpa hesitating and a worried look passing over Grandma's eyes. Then Sakis turned to you and said:

“Play something on the piano, kiddo, and let me hear your voice, I've heard you have an amazing voice.”

You were ready to do him the favor, but Mama sprang to her feet, “Our little Amalia is tired today, and she has a sore throat, better that she doesn't sing,” she said. “Better not,” you echoed and she—do you remember, Amalia?—walked to the door, said, “If you'll excuse me,” and hurried out.

She came back late that night . . . I woke up . . . I heard her crying . . . What's going on with our mother, Amalia? What is it that's eating her up inside?

Sakis didn't waste his time on us. He had other plans. He didn't want to do anything we'd come up with.

“I'll wander around the stores on my own, I have the addresses right here,” he said, and took out a crocodile-skin Filofax. “I'll go to Fifth Avenue, I have all the addresses I need.” And proudly he showed us an endless list of names: Bergdorf Goodman, Carolina Herrera, Celine, Cerruti, Gucci, Intermix, Krizia, Saks, Ferragamo, Takashimaya, and Valentino. “I'll spare you the hassle of coming along; it'll take me hours to pick out suits and presents.”

He asked us if we knew of a place that makes custom-tailored shirts so he could have his monogram embroidered on them, and, oh yes, he also wanted to get the latest cell phone. Amalia, you looked at him with empty eyes, your eyes looked just like hers, the yellow in your eyes, with that hint of gold. For a moment your eyes and Mama's eyes seemed the same. You wanted to do as she had done. To say excuse me, and to disappear. But, Amalia, you were fourteen years old and sudden departures were not permitted. So you remained, as did I, in the living room with our guest. If your eyes could speak, they would have said a prayer for the wrongful death of a little crocodile and asked:
How did that little crocodile, that swam happily in lakes and swamps, end up becoming a cover for our guest's personal organizer?
And how could you ever sing and play the piano in front of a little dead crocodile?

Sakis was a sales representative. Ah, Seraphim, I don't know if that's what you dreamed your son would become. He even suggested he and Grandpa go into business together.

“We can get into security systems, uncle. In Greece now everyone wants to protect their windows with aluminum bars so they can sleep soundly at night, like in the old times,” he said. “We should work together, uncle, we'll make a pile.”

Grandpa looked at him, at a loss, and said nothing . . . And when Sakis got up to leave, saying, “Cousin Frosso and I will go out on the town one night,” Grandpa seemed afraid for some reason to show his unease. So he kept it inside and said, “Yes, of course, nephew, that's a good idea.” And it was then that I sensed that Grandpa's life was ebbing and that he wouldn't be with us for much longer.

At home one day we had an emergency. Grandpa woke up as if he were someone else. Grandma kept speaking to him but he remained mute.

“Menelaos, your coffee's ready. Would you like a muffin? A bagel?”

Menelaos didn't make a sound.

“Grandpa, talk to us. Do you want some bread?”

He sat there motionless, as if made of stone. Could he not hear us? Could he not understand us? We feared the worst. A stroke. We were prepared. Even us kids. At school we'd been trained in first aid. If it was a stroke, we had to think of the word. “Remember the first three letters, STR: S (smile), T (talk), R (raise).”

Smile: Tell him to smile.

Talk: Tell him to say a simple sentence, like “Today is a sunny day.”

Raise: Tell him to raise his arms.

“Grandpa, smile. Say, ‘Today is Thursday, my name is Menelaos.' Raise your arms.”

Nothing. His face was like a death mask. Immobile, motionless. And just as Grandma, all flustered, began calling for an ambulance, Grandpa took her hand.

“Don't bother with a doctor, Erasmia. It's not necessary. Here, look at me, I'm smiling,” he said and grimaced. “Today is Thursday, my name is Menelaos Argyriou. Here are my two arms and I'm raising them. My time has yet to come.” He looked each one of us in the eye. In a tired voice, he added: “I'm sad, I'm not sick. Don't confuse sadness and sickness.”

“Praise the Lord!” said Grandma with a sigh of relief and Anthoula made the sign of the cross.

“Everything's okay,” said Mama and went out, while we left for school.

But Grandpa's time wasn't far off. It wasn't with a stroke but with sadness that Menelaos said goodbye to life. He was sad that “over there” a man like Sakis was living and growing and prospering. Sakis and his crocodile Filofax.

 

 

* * *

“We are entering an area of turbulence. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts.”

“Sir, the sign is on, please buckle up, we're entering turbulence.”

“Thank you, I'm so sorry. I didn't notice it.”

If you ever have a child, don't give it a dead person's name. Give your child a name without a past, Amalia.

“
Me? Have a child? You're talking craziness again, Jonathan.
”

 

 

* * *

 

 

She was lying on the couch, it was in the afternoon and we'd just got back from school, she was dozing. She had already changed her name. She had begun to drink like a fiend. She kept stashing little bottles—so that they'd fit anywhere—of whiskey in the bathroom, in the throw pillows, in your room. One day, “What's this?” you asked, you didn't know. You found a little bottle in the belly of one of your dolls.

“It's nothing,” said Grandma. She snatched the bottle from your hands. “It got there by mistake,” she said.

Why did they lie to us? What was the truth they were hiding from us?

Mama got up from the couch, any sleepiness had disappeared from her face. She shoved Grandma angrily. “It didn't get there by mistake,” she shouted. “I put it there, it's mine.”

“What is it, Mama, what's inside?”

“Medicine.”

“Why did you put it here? You ruined Marlena's dress, her belly button's sticking out, look,” and you pointed at the hole in the belly of your huge doll and there was anger in your face, “you're bad,” you yelled at her, “I don't love you.”

“I'm bad, but you be good,” she said, and shut herself in her room.

We could hear nothing, what were we waiting for? Sobs? Sighs? It became quiet. That woman's tears never had a voice. Silence.

“I'll buy you another doll,” said Grandma.

“I want that one,” you declared, and from that moment on I only cared about one thing; ever since I can remember myself, I only wanted one thing: that you should never have anything broken, nothing with holes in it, nothing ruined. But our story was full of holes. And Grandma was too old to fill them, Anthoula too clumsy, and Grandpa . . . for some time now, Grandpa had been preparing for his big journey.

You were seven and I was nine. A story ran on inside us. Children can endure all kinds of stories. They're saving their strength for what is to come.

Who was our father? In the beginning, I called Menelaos “daddy,” and no one said:

“Wrong, that's your grandpa, don't call him ‘daddy' again.”

Menelaos never got angry and never corrected me when I called him “daddy.” It made him happy, and sad, and frightened, and I could see all these things in his eyes, Amalia, I'm telling you the truth, I was just a little kid and I could see that a person is never a single one, but lots of people together, and the things people have inside them are many and muddled up, and it's this “lots of people together” that makes us want one another. Whoever our father was, he never came.

“He lives far away, he lives elsewhere,” they'd tell us.

“Elsewhere where, in which country?”

“He's always traveling, he has no country.”

“Why isn't he with us?”

“Because he can't be in one place, he suffers too much.”

“Why doesn't he come for the day?”

“He's afraid that he may not be able to leave afterwards, that he'll grow attached to you.”

“And what if he does? And what if he stays? And what if we all stay together?”

“He'll be like a dead man.”

“Show us a picture if him.”

“There is no picture of him.”

So then I'd say to myself:
Daddy is the man who stays inside Mama's body and never appears, but he's there, enchanted by a woman, circulating inside her like blood, and in exchange filling his belly with her warmth.
 

Did we have the same father? Did she meet him secretly? On certain rare occasions perhaps, when he interrupted his absence and would come to meet her, always far from the house, so that he wouldn't see me, so that he wouldn't lay eyes on his son and grow attached to him and then not be able to leave, and once, during a secret, amorous encounter, one that was a little more desperate, a little more unbearable than the others, when they made love like it was the last time, then it was your turn to be born, Amalia, and we were both the children of a great, impossible love, that's what I'd tell myself. And this thought made me feel better.

“
You were always in love with dreams, Jonathan.
”

We lived with an invisible father.

“
In order to love a human being, Jonathan, they have to be invisible.
Otherwise, as soon as they appear, love disappears.
”

Then you were no longer a baby . . . Whenever you'd see a man, you'd say “daddy, you daddy” and then “father” and you'd learned to say “babá” in Greek, “hush, Amalia,” “stop it, Amalia, stop it,” we don't know this gentleman, he's the delivery boy, the porter, Grandpa's employee, the bus driver, a homeless man on the street, a carriage driver in Central Park, a mounted policeman, a . . . Nobody is your daddy, Amalia, and only she knows who he is.

And then one morning, on Thanksgiving Day, the day when families come together, “You're grown children now, it's time to learn the truth,” she said.

“No, we're not grown children yet, we need more time, let us not be grown children for a little while longer, I'm eleven and my sister's barely nine.”

But she refused to be swayed, not even when I told her:

“The truth is for the very old, Mama, and maybe not even for them.”

“Your father died of a heart attack,” she announced. “He was fifty-four years old, his name was John Merida.”

During the following days, she kept changing the name and the story:

“Your father was a war hero, his name was John Carrey.”

“Your father was a businessman, his name was Peter Allison; he died in a plane crash.”

You suddenly stopped calling every man you met “father.” Orphan children feed on stories. We grew up on them. We went over them in our heads, bringing them to life. Words, even when they were marked by pain, stole our pain away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sixty years earlier, the other Frosso had a hard time making up stories, she didn't want to, she was a mere girl of twenty-two, she didn't want the big dream, she wanted the little one, her own tiny little dream, the garden, the rosebushes, the cyclamens were what she wanted, they sprang out of the ground with the first rain and their fragrance drove her wild, she wanted to be driven wild by the smells of the earth, she wanted the sea she remembered, the sea that bathed her eyes from afar and gave moisture to her body . . . The poverty she knew—she yearned for all those things she knew. But Menelaos would say, “Frosso, we'll die if we stay here,” and he took her away, he carried her off, as soon as they were married, together with her bundle of clothes and belongings, the first time she saw the sea up close was at Piraeus, she was frightened by the crowds, the music, the municipal band was playing, was it a celebration or a memorial service for a dead official? The ship was like a moored beast, the biggest thing she'd ever seen in her life. It was immense. It would take her into its belly, for twenty-one days it would take her on a journey “far away.” She had her heart in her mouth, “I don't want to go,” she whispered, but he was having none of it, with the tickets in his hand he dragged her along, “Come on, my little Frosso, we're late,” she screeched, “I won't go, I want my mama, I won't go,” “Are you stark raving mad, woman? Your mother's been dead for years,” “I want her, I'm not getting on.” Menelaos grew angry, “You're getting on and you're going to like it.” Then he thought he'd try and cajole her, “Come on, baby girl, why don't you sing a song to cure what ails you with that voice of an angel that you have, come on, my sweet, sing a song and forget your sorrows, sing, my angel,” oh, Amalia, there are no such songs . . . such songs were never written on this earth . . . only the band could be heard, playing a jaunty march . . . people were embracing, Greek and American flags were waving . . . it was a spring day and the sky was clear. Soon, the ship's horn gave the signal, the ship slipped her moorings, and the voyage to the dream began. It was nine o'clock in the morning. Shortly after, the blood spoke. What cyclamen and what sea and what fragrance of honeysuckle and lemon? They found themselves crammed into a dark hold, and it smelled of sweat, and coal, and something scorched; it smelled of an animal's wounded flesh.