She said, “No, we’re not going for coffee. Unlock the doors.”
He did, and expected her to come to the passenger seat, but she got into the back. Dina, never doing things as a normal person. She shook out her umbrella, but still, water got onto the seats—good thing he chose leather. He saw that the umbrella had a little gold brain on the top. To say what about her, exactly? She leaned forward enough that it made her look taller than she actually was, and as if she was seated both in the back and the front. She looked very fit, not eating so much sweets. Why were all his exes deciding to look pretty now that he was done with them?
“What’s this about, malaka?”
Before she had scared a little death out of him, he had been speaking the words of the letter to himself, intent on fixing them to memory in a way that made them sound eloquent and like the wise thoughts of a man who has suffered with time. His decision had been: he would recite them to her, impress them on her, and Dina would be moved. Not out of pity or obligation or being forced to, which is what his family thought his final wishes meant, but because it would become important to her. He would make it so. He hesitated now, because he did not want her to react as Carol did.
“I will say first: please.”
Dina scoffed, but it had her interested. They both knew that he had never started a conversation between them with this word.
He looked at the crumpled letter. He bit his cheek, which he knew put a fold onto his face.
“Well, should I read it?”
He said, “Yes. If only you don’t get out before we have a chance to talk.”
She took the letter from him, and he realized how warm his rehearsal had made the pages. Her eyes moved too quickly to appreciate what he was saying, and he tried to keep up in his mind with what flashed across her face in the rearview. He took a breath. He might have to interrupt if her face got too dark. He needed her to say yes.
He said, “I want you to be my executor.”
Dina laughed. “You should have asked me years ago.”
Having only ever heard the word execution, this is how he pronounced it: EX-ecutor. It made perfect sense: the man in the hood who uses the double ax to separate your life from your body, your neck from your chin, is the one who is responsible for what happens to your body after death. Stavros’s body was also his estate.
Stavros turned completely around in his seat so she could understand him. “The one who manages the will,” he said, “to make sure it is correct.”
Dina, his last resort. Why not Marina, at least? Because Marina had already told him no. She had said exactly this: A chicken doesn’t shit in your bed if you don’t tuck it in. Marina did not believe him about his death, and that hurt his feelings. Besides, Marina might not agree with his final decisions regarding his will.
Dina looked down again at the page. He winced, because he knew what would come next. “Am I in your will?”
“Picture yourself as me,” Stavros offered. “I need a person who can think about my death without confusion on the brain.” Then, when she was quiet, he said, “We were too long ago, anyway.”
“I don’t care, really,” Dina said. “It costs too much to be in your will.”
He nodded, gravely. He saw she was going in the direction of Carol and Rhonda, but also that maybe she was not. It was this: something still connected them. There were the daughters, of course, but also, they had made their home in America together. Brother and sister, not ex and ex. Which, if you think about it, he thought, is truth, because people who marry and then divorce and recognize each other thirty years later are more like siblings than man and wife.
He said, “I need someone who can take care of the girls when I am gone.”
He meant this, even if he did not mean that she would be the one to do it. He would never pick her to do it, because she had never done it, and actually it was a point of pride for him that he had done it, on his own.
In the beginning of their relationship, he was crisp Apple, she was Core. Then he was summery Peach and she was Pit. Then he was luxurious Pear, and she was Core again. He could cut the ripe parts of himself from her and did, that was the only way to survive, but he always noted the parts that were missing. If he had been Mask, he realized, she would have been Eyeholes. If he had been Dog, she Tongue. If Chicken, Liver. Fifteen years of hating the Core, then another fifteen pretending it did not exist, Stavros had finally, only yesterday, come to acceptance that you could not have Stavros without Dina.
The question was ridiculous, because nothing could be so obvious. Who was invited to a wedding when no one wanted them there? Who was invited who was not friend or family or business associate or caterer? Who was invited who did not understand it was wrong to sit in the backseat and make someone turn themselves in the chair to address you? She was reminding him of a story his grandmother used to tell him, sing to him of the old village witch who became jealous and rageful when she was not asked to the wedding of a farmer she had helped, and after that she blacked him out of growing anything but roots—roots of tomato, roots of squash, nothing ever surviving aboveground. The food that saved his family? The potatoes.
“You want to be invited to a horse show to watch how much a horse can piss?” Stavros asked. “Ela, Dina, we all knew it was over before it was beginning. She is already divorce.”
“That didn’t stop you from going.” She added, “I’m the mother.” She said this with her neck, in a way that gave it muscles. She had an army neck.
“Yes, OK, maybe,” Stavros said. “But I am not the one to ask about this. Litza is the one who refuse to make an invitation.”
That, at least, was true. Litza had told him of that decision, which had pleased him, but he had never had to be the one to say, No. Instead, they had used the slot for one of his vendors. He did not like that Dina looked so hurt about it, but it gave some small satisfaction that being uninvited had served as punishment for years of neglect and low-life behavior.
Dina turned her head to look outside. The rain was not so heavy now. “OK, Stavro, I will do this for you.” She looked him dead in the mirror. There was no slow eye on her. “If you’re here, it means you’ve got no one else.”
Here was the condition by which she was agreeing to give him her cooperation: not denying it. It made him feel grateful and seen, and, yes, some resentment. He opened his mouth to say, Good, excellent, I knew you would, here is the way we proceed with the terms, which if you look at them . . . He said, “Thanks.”
She nodded, which made her look away, but then she was back at him, in the mirror. “I want a seat reserved for me, front row.”
He nodded. This pleased him. It would look, to many, as if she were sorry for all of her ruinings. Funerals were where people apologized, sometimes just by showing up.
They sat together a minute longer. She was silent, would not meet his gaze in the rearview. Lonely Dina, a nearly forgotten memory which he was forcing himself to bring to the present; she resembled him more than she ever had, except for that one day, long ago, when he took her by the hand and they left his parents’ farm.
Dina smiled. “Do I get to give the eulogy?”
“The eulogy,” Stavros said, “I have big plans for.”
CHAPTER 12
* * *
From across the street, Litza watched Dina get out of her father’s car. Litza knew it was her because she walked through puddles rather than around them. It had been some years since they had seen each other in person. The last time Litza went looking for her, she found Dina’s profile online. Occupation listed as Spiritual Wanderer, company as Mother Earth. These two, these parents, that’s what she had to choose from?
It was crazy that her father was here. It was crazier than his email. He hated this woman more than anyone in the world. Whenever he wanted to hurt Stavroula or Litza, he compared them to their biological mother. Nothing until now had made Litza think h
e believed in his own bullshit, but this forced her to pause and take him seriously—if only for a moment. He was here because he was afraid of death and had nowhere else to go? More likely he was just delivering yet another belittling letter.
All through her childhood, Litza yearned for Dina, whom she recalled in blurs that more resembled bruises than face. She and her mother must have the same wild hair. They must have similar noses. She did not know what else she had gotten, though her father said it was a conniving personality. No one spoke Dina’s name. Litza wanted to. She tried with Stavroula. There was no need to talk about their mother when there was a mother right here, was how Stavroula saw it. For Stavroula, Dina never happened. For Litza, she was always happening. She was always close. Overhearing adults, Litza learned things about Dina. Dina had the eyes of a rabid dog. Dina had replaced the skin around her vulnerable, membranous throat with an animal’s pelt. Dina made decisions that other adults did not make, because Dina had taken one look at the adults around her and decided, wildly, to not do anything they did. Dina did not remarry. Dina said no to men.
It made her all the more tempting.
Litza picked up leaves that might have resembled Dina in certain moods, or that Dina herself might have stepped on. She carried them in her pockets, where they disintegrated into small flecks. Mother got her a plastic envelope to store her leaves in. Litza crammed unimportant leaves into the envelope, which Mother kept for her on the refrigerator, and she kept the ones for her mother hidden. In the backyard, she lit a fire and tried to spell Dina with the smoke.
Then, the miracle happened. When Litza was in fifth grade, Dina showed up at school.
Litza went out to clap erasers against the fence, even though she wasn’t supposed to do it that way, and there was Dina. Standing in the teachers’ parking lot with a long black coat on. Around her neck, an animal. She was too far away to hear, but she spoke as she advanced. Litza tried to make out her blotted face. The bell rang, and children flooded the pavement.
Stavroula got to Litza first, and before she could tell her to get the erasers back to the classroom, Litza said, “It’s her.” She couldn’t stop herself. She pushed many young children with backpacks. She tried to shake off Stavroula, knowing that her sister would keep her from her mother. Litza broke into a run. “It’s her, it’s her.” The parking lot was full of moving cars now, and adults pushing their way through children, too, and teachers putting keys into cars and leaving. Dina was nowhere to be seen. The long black coat was gone.
Litza still held the erasers, and when Stavroula said, “Mother’s picking us up at the corner,” Litza whipped an eraser at Stavroula’s face. The other she smacked on her teacher’s windshield.
Mother made her walk back to the teacher’s car, but the car was gone, so Mother made her write an apology after dinner, which was something Litza could do easily from memory. While Mother was watching TV, Ruby in her lap, Litza punched in the numbers, even their tone familial. Dina Lazaridis, phone number, street address. All available in the phone book for anyone wanting to know. Anyone brave enough to look and memorize, almost brave enough to call.
“Hello?” her mother said.
Litza breathed into the receiver, hoping she would recognize her just by the way air went in and out of her body. “It’s me,” Litza said.
“Stavroula?” she answered, just as breathless, “It’s you?”
“No, no, no,” Litza said. “Me.” This she said only to herself because she had hung up immediately.
The next day at school, Litza gave her teacher the apology. She pleaded for one more chance to show she could handle the eraser job. The teacher read the note, but she still said no. Litza went outside anyway, when the teacher was addressing three squabbling girls. She walked out to the parking lot, and some parents who recognized her waved, but she did not wave back. She circled the building in case Dina was waiting somewhere else. The closer it got to the last bell, the more agitated she became. She wanted to get to Dina before Stavroula did. She imagined them arriving at the same time, and she imagined Dina hugging Stavroula first.
Dina did not come.
The next time Litza called, she left a message. And it was this: I will be at the McDonald’s at 8:10 a.m. on Thursday.
She saw Dina before Dina saw her. It was the lazy eye—to Litza, this was the kind of feature someone was given in a fairy tale to indicate they were crucial to the story. Plus, Dina’s hair was not at all like hers, it was black like coffee—no, crows. Her nose was big and beautiful. But she looked like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be a man or a woman, a young person or an old one. Litza decided she did not want people thinking this was her mother. She decided she did not understand the lazy eye after all—how could she be sure her mother was truly seeing her?
Dina sat down, which meant she had to push the table away from the booth. She took Litza’s hands. Maybe because she was staring so intently at Litza’s face, the lazy eye went away; this made Litza’s heart hop in her chest. Still, Litza felt nervous having her hands held; she was nervous to take them back. Dina rolled her thumb over Litza’s knuckles like she was wanting to smooth them out.
“I’m your mother,” Dina said. “Do you know that?”
Litza nodded. Litza would have petted a rabbit the way her mother was petting her. Her mother’s hands were not as rough as they looked. A little rough, the way a nest must be.
“I’ve been waiting for you your whole life, Litza.”
Litza felt her hands relax into Dina’s. She told herself, This is my mother. “Everybody thinks I’m at school,” Litza said.
Dina got them hash browns, three each. She ordered Litza a small orange juice. Litza sipped it slowly. She felt shy. If Mother caught her, she would want to know, again, why Litza was being bad, and again, Litza would not know how to answer except to say, I had to.
Dina was watching her eat a hash brown and take sips of juice. “Sometimes I see you walking home in the afternoons.”
“You see me?”
“I live close, just a few blocks from here, in an apartment. I can show you, if you like.”
Litza would like that. Litza wanted to see her house, her car, her pets, which she must have—
“Slow down,” Dina said, “you’ll get sick if you eat too fast.”
“I always eat like this.”
Dina was not eating at all. She said, “I want to know everything, all the time I missed.”
“You missed basically all of it.”
Dina tilted her head, but this time the eye drifted left, which Litza did not like. She said, “I’ve been paying for my mistakes. But it doesn’t have to be like that. You, me, your sister. We’re going to be happy together.”
This was not the plan. The plan was two, a train, airport, then a plane for Greece. All her clothes are new, all her extended family is happy to see her, her mother’s mother. They buy her Nirvana CDs, which are selling like gyros even on the island, and she goes to school and is good at Greek, and in a few years when everyone has calmed down, she and Dina come back to America, and Dina’s eyes never stray, and she starts high school. “What if Stavroula doesn’t want to?”
“We’ll persuade her.” Dina rubbed just the one knuckle on Litza’s hand, over and over, with her thumb. The longer it went—It did not feel good. Litza pulled back her hand. She said, “I have to get back to school. I’m already in trouble.”
“I will do everything, whatever it takes. I can protect you.”
“How?”
“I’m your mother.”
Litza nodded. She reminded herself that adults say all kinds of things if you let them get away with it. If they think you’ll believe them. She was not yet sure about Dina, so she said, “I’ll walk myself back.”
Dina said, “Take these,” and fumbled to pack the remaining hash browns in a paper bag. Litza zipped the paper bag into her backpack, knowing that Mother would smell the food and want to know where she got it. Dina said, “Do you have lunch mo
ney?” She took some bills out of her pocket and squeezed them into Litza’s hands. Dina kept squeezing her hands with the money in it, not saying anything, so that the quarters jammed against Litza’s fingers.
Litza walked five steps before she let herself look back. Dina was standing at the table, watching her.
And was she watching now? All Litza saw, through the rain, was the ruffle of a curtain in one of the apartment windows, all identical, and perhaps someone staring back.
CHAPTER 13
* * *
Stavros sat outside the diner on a wooden pallet gazing at the startled sky. He could hear the sounds from the kitchen winding down the latest hours of the day and winding up the morning. Marina would be in soon. In the meantime, the night cooks would keep the travelers awake with sandwiches and pie. They would break everything down so that Marina could start all over again. But for now, at least, the stars were kind, and it was cold. For now, the tree branches nodded with sleepiness. The goat’s head was in his lap, and they were both chewing cigarettes. Only Stavros’s was lit.
He would die in five days. Less than a week now.
Stavros had trouble with sleep. He walked in slippers from his apartment. The slippers were the color of camels, and they had spills and holes at certain places and made his feet look like humps. He looked at his feet when he said, “Have you ever seen any man more pitiful?”
A sigh so gloomy from the goat. Stavros, too.
It had been hours since Stavros had spoken. He had been with himself only and he did not like that feeling when he could count the hours he had left to live. Even Marina had left early, because he had lost his temper and she had kept hers. Always, always she kept hers, and was that really fair? Was it fair that the only person who understands him is the funeral director? We will make this as easy for you as we can, the man said over the phone. We will make it comfortable for your daughters.