Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

Academic to me then, the sad fate of the creature. Asterius, through no fault of his own, born a monster. The poisoned fruit of betrayal, a thing of shame hidden away; I don’t understand any of that at eight. I’m just rooting for Theseus . . .

. . . as my grandmother, in 1923, prepares to meet the creature hidden in her womb. Holding her belly, she sits in the backseat of the taxi, while Lina, up front, tells the driver to hurry. Desdemona breathes in and out, like a runner pacing herself, and Lina says, “I’m not even mad at you for waking me up. I was going to the hospital in the morning anyway. They’re letting me take the baby home.” But Desdemona isn’t listening. She opens her prepacked suitcase, feeling among nightgown and slippers for her worry beads. Amber like congealed honey, cracked by heat, they’ve gotten her through massacres, a refugee march, and a burning city, and she clicks them as the taxi rattles over the dark streets, trying to outrace her contractions . . .

. . . as Zizmo races the Packard over the ice. The speedometer needle rises. The engine thunders. Tire chains rooster-tail snow. The Packard hurtles into the darkness, skidding on patches, fishtailing. “Did you two have it all planned?” he shouts. “Have Lina marry an American citizen so she could sponsor you?”

“What are you talking about?” my grandfather tries to reason. “When you and Lina got married, I didn’t even know I was coming to America. Please slow down.”

“Was that the plan? Find a husband and then move into his house!”

The never-failing conceit of Minotaur movies. The monster always approaches from the direction you least expect. Likewise, out on Lake St. Clair, my grandfather has been looking out for the Purple Gang, when in reality the monster is right next to him, at the wheel of the car. In the wind from the open door, Zizmo’s frizzy hair streams back like a mane. His head is lowered, his nostrils flared. His eyes shine with fury.

“Who is it!”

“Jimmy! Turn around! The ice! You’re not looking at the ice.”

“I won’t stop unless you tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell. Lina’s a good girl. A good wife to you. I swear!”

But the Packard hurtles on. My grandfather flattens himself against his seat.

“What about the baby, Jimmy? Think about your daughter.”

“Who says it’s mine?”

“Of course it’s yours.”

“I never should have married that girl.”

Lefty doesn’t have time to argue the point. Without answering any more questions, he rolls out the open door, free of the car. The wind hits him like a solid force, knocking him back against the rear fender. He watches as his muffler, in slow motion, winds itself around the Packard’s back wheel. He feels it tighten like a noose, but then the scarf comes loose from his neck, and time speeds up again as Lefty is thrown clear of the auto. He covers his face as he hits the ice, skidding a great distance. When he looks up again, he sees the Packard, still going. It’s impossible to tell if Zizmo is trying to turn, to brake. Lefty stands up, nothing broken, and watches as Zizmo hurtles crazily on into the darkness . . . sixty yards . . . eighty . . . a hundred . . . until suddenly another sound is heard. Above the engine roar comes a loud crack, followed by a scintillation spreading underfoot, as the Packard hits a dark patch on the frozen lake.

Just like ice, lives crack, too. Personalities. Identities. Jimmy Zizmo, crouching over the Packard’s wheel, has already changed past understanding. Right here is where the trail goes cold. I can take you this far and no further. Maybe it was a jealous rage. Or maybe he was just figuring his options. Weighing a dowry against the expense of raising a family. Guessing that it couldn’t go on forever, this boom time of Prohibition.

And there’s one further possibility: he might have been faking the whole thing.

But there’s no time for these ruminations. Because the ice is screaming. Zizmo’s front wheels crash through the surface. The Packard, as gracefully as an elephant standing on its front legs, flips up onto its grille. There’s a moment where the headlamps illuminate the ice and water below, like a swimming pool, but then the hood crashes through and, with a shower of sparks, everything goes dark.

At Women’s Hospital, Desdemona was in labor for six hours. Dr. Philobosian delivered the baby, whose sex was revealed in the usual manner: by spreading the legs apart and looking. “Congratulations. A son.”

Desdemona, with great relief, cried out, “The only hair is on his head.”

Lefty arrived at the hospital soon thereafter. He had walked back to shore and hitched a ride on a milk truck home. Now he stood at the window of the nursery, his armpits still rank with fear, his right cheek roughened by his fall on the ice and his lower lip swollen. Just that morning, fortuitously, Lina’s baby had gained enough weight to leave the incubator. The nurses held up both children. The boy was named Miltiades after the great Athenian general, but would be known as Milton, after the great English poet. The girl, who would grow up without a father, was named Theodora, after the scandalous empress of Byzantium whom Sourmelina admired. She would later get an American nickname, too.

But there was something else I wanted to mention about those babies. Something impossible to see with the naked eye. Look closer. There. That’s right:

One mutation apiece.

Jimmy Zizmo’s funeral was held thirteen days later by permission of the bishop in Chicago. For nearly two weeks the family stayed at home, polluted by death, greeting the occasional visitor who came to pay respects. Black cloths covered the mirrors. Black streamers draped the doors. Because a person should never show vanity in the presence of death, Lefty stopped shaving and by the day of the funeral had grown nearly a full beard.

The failure of the police to recover the body had caused the delay. On the day after the accident, two detectives had gone out to inspect the scene. The ice had refrozen during the night and a few inches of new snow had fallen. The detectives trudged back and forth, searching for tire tracks, but after a half hour gave up. They accepted Lefty’s story that Zizmo had gone ice-fishing and might have been drinking. One detective assured Lefty that bodies often turned up in the spring, remarkably preserved because of the freezing water.

The family went ahead with their grief. Father Stylianopoulos brought the case to the attention of the bishop, who granted the request to give Zizmo an Orthodox funeral, provided an interment ceremony be held at the graveside if the body were later found. Lefty took care of the funeral arrangements. He picked out a casket, chose a plot, ordered a headstone, and paid for the death notices in the newspaper. In those days Greek immigrants were beginning to use funeral parlors, but Sourmelina insisted that the viewing be held at home. For over a week mourners arrived into the darkened sala , where the window shades had been drawn and the scent of flowers hung heavy in the air. Zizmo’s shadowy business associates made visits, as well as people from the speakeasies he supplied and a few of Lina’s friends. After giving the widow their condolences, they crossed the living room to stand before the open coffin. Inside, resting on a pillow, was a framed photograph of Jimmy Zizmo. The picture showed Zizmo in three-quarters profile, gazing up toward the celestial glow of studio lighting. Sourmelina had cut the ribbon between their wedding crowns and placed her husband’s inside the coffin, too.

Sourmelina’s anguish at her husband’s death far exceeded her affection for him in life. For ten hours over two days she keened over Jimmy Zizmo’s empty coffin, reciting the mirologhia . In the best histrionic village style, Sourmelina unleashed soaring arias in which she lamented the death of her husband and castigated him for dying. When she was finished with Zizmo she railed at God for taking him so soon, and bemoaned the fate of her newborn daughter. “You are to blame! It is all your fault!” she cried. “What reason was there for you to die? You have left me a widow! You have left your child on the streets!” She nursed the baby as she keened and every so often held her up so that Zizmo and God could see what they had done. The older immigrants, hearing Lina’s rage, found themselves returning to their childhood in Greece, to memories of their own grandparents’ or parents’ funerals, and everyone agreed that such a display of grief would guarantee Jimmy Zizmo’s soul eternal peace.