Neil Olson - The Icon

Was it right to finally speak of it? Would there be relief, or just more pain? Could he do it to the boy? Could he do it, again, to himself?

“Truly, what have you been told?”

“Nothing. I want you to tell me. I want to hear it from you.”

There was no noise from the study. It was as if the other three had vanished. The old man looked at the framed pencil sketch on the wall behind the boy, Alekos’ face in profile, done by Matthew at age fourteen. Highly skilled work. He is fumbling in the dark, Andreas thought, he doesn’t really know anything. Someone had let a loose word slip and the boy is pressing the case. I’m not the first he has asked, which means he’s had no satisfaction elsewhere. He thought of the promise he and Fotis had made each other years before. Did he still owe that silence after all that had happened since then? Was there a way to speak to Matthew of this without breaking that bond?

“I am sorry,” he said finally. “It is one of those foolish situations where if you do not know, I cannot tell you. It is a trust between your godfather and myself.”

Voices were suddenly raised in the study. Matthew’s expression grew distracted. Either he was letting the matter go, or he was casting about in his mind for a different approach. Then footsteps in the hall, and both men looked up. A bewildered and defeated-looking Irini stood in the doorway.

“He threw me out. Do you believe that?” Matthew pulled out a chair, but she would not sit, just leaned against her son. “He can’t bear to have me help him.”

“You were probably trying too hard.”

“I just wanted to make sure he actually ate it.”

“What, were you trying to spoon-feed him?”

“He was spilling it all over.”

“You’ve got to let him do things for himself. He doesn’t want to feel like an invalid.”

She sat, shaking her head, palms placed flat on the table, eyes on the large rain-spattered window. Then her gaze shifted to Andreas.

“You’re staying with us tonight?”

He shrugged.

“No?” Her voice was hard. “You’re going to make my daughter drive you into the city in the rain and dark, you selfish old man?”

He was taken aback by her fierceness, even as he recognized the need. This was not the passive, manipulative creature who had married his son thirty years ago. She had grown tough, and he was proud of her for it.

“I would never ask such a thing. I will stay, if you will have me.”

“You are very welcome here,” she answered softly. “You’ve always been welcome.”

Let’s not go into all that, he thought.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your talk,” she continued. Neither man responded. “I don’t know what all of you have been whispering about this week, and I don’t care. But there will be no secret discussions, no arguments, no terrible stories while you’re in this house. I won’t have Alex being upset, or anyone upset around him. Do you both understand me?”

She looked to Andreas first, and he nodded. Matthew followed suit.

“Good. I need your help, boys. Matthew, go sit with your father. Babas, you go put your feet on the sofa, I’ll wake you in half an hour.”

They both moved to comply with her wishes.

She kissed him there in the doorway, for all the world to see, and Matthew found he didn’t care. He could barely remember walking here, had found himself almost unconsciously carried to her doorstep. The impulse had been visceral, intense, go to her, his body knowing what was good for him better than his mind. Ana pulled him in the door and held him for many long, comforting moments.

“Your father’s home?”

“Yes. We brought him home yesterday.”

“Are you OK with that?” She stood back, her knowing gaze upon him once more, reading his doubts. “Is that good?”

“It is.” He seemed to discern the truth of it there on the spot. The hell with more treatment, home and family were what was needed. Care. Hope. Faith. “It’s good.” He smiled at her as if it were her doing. “We’ll see how it goes from here.”

When she did nothing further, he started down the hall toward the kitchen, his mind already seeing the stairs beyond, the small chamber and that other woman who was the third part of this triangle. Ana took his arm and pulled him the other way, toward the stairs going up.

“No, no icon today. Just you and me.”

He let her lead him up the stairs, his legs willing but his muscles clenched, while his heart began to race. Weird fears hounded him once more. He wanted to be up here, with her. He wanted to be down below, with it. She couldn’t really mean to keep him from it. The idea angered him, and the anger shamed him. He strained to control his emotions as Ana stripped her clothes off, slowly, methodically. It was no good. She saw everything, he could tell.

“I want this to be about us, Matthew. I want there to be some part of this that is only about us.”

She pulled his shirt up and pressed her breasts and belly against his skin. Her cool flesh and hard nipples demanded his attention. His body reacted, scorning his anger, ignoring the lack of instruction from his troubled, suspicious mind. Fotis’ words came back to him. Who knew what her own secrets were? At this moment, who cared? Her tongue found his; he remembered the night they had spent together. He wanted more of that, wanted to lose himself in her. The Mother of Christ receded, but did not disappear from his thoughts.

The priest sat in a low chair in the corner, yet seemed to command the room. In the few minutes of small talk that accompanied everyone’s getting settled, Matthew learned that Father Tomas was Greek-born but ordained in the American branch of the church, and served Bishop Makarios in New Jersey. He had arrived alone, no aide accompanying him. Fifty-some-thing, gray temples and curly black hair, a lined, trustworthy face, and kind eyes. Little was said at first about his purpose here, but he produced documents from the Holy Synod in Athens that seemed to satisfy Ana’s lawyer, Wallace.

In the only bright corner of the dark study sat the Holy Mother, on an aluminum easel, staring out at all of them. Matthew had looked at her a long time before the priest came, while Ana and the lawyer conferred, but now he turned his chair away and tried to clear his mind. Tomas had examined the icon when he arrived, but since then had mostly ignored it, his eyes instead roaming over the massive oak bookcases, hardly settling anywhere but taking in a good deal.

“Your grandfather collected more than paintings, I see.”

“Yes,” Ana responded. “He was very proud of his book collection. Maybe even more than he was of the paintings. I think he felt closer to them.”

“Of course,” the priest agreed. “One can be more intimate with a book, hold it, turn its pages. A book is a friend. A painting simply hangs there, aloof.” He glanced upward again. “I see some friends of my own on these shelves. Dostoyevsky. Flaubert. Kazantzakis. And some rare titles. Maybe we can talk books after we talk art.”

“How about we take one transaction at a time,” Wallace cut in. Late sixties, gray-haired and rheumy-eyed, a gravelly voice and a hacking cough that bespoke a lifelong cigarette habit, recently kicked, judging by his fidgety fingers. Nothing in his slumped posture, shifty gaze, or false-friendly delivery conveyed trustworthiness to Matthew, but Ana seemed to rely on and defer to him.

“Indeed,” Father Tomas said.

“Now,” Wallace shuffled his notes to no purpose, “I assume we can take your satisfaction with the work as a given.”

“If you refer to its artistic quality, I am hardly the proper judge, yet I pronounce myself well pleased. Of course, it’s suffered much wear.”