Christos Ikonomou - Something Will Happen, You'll See

Lefterio please do not be sad I beg you. I beg you please do not do anything silly of the kind you write to me because it is a shame and unjust to God for a golden girl like you to have her heart poisoned like that. God is great my Lefteria. Be patient thats all I write to you .

I send greetings to everyone from my husband Fotis and from all my children give all my greetings to my relations your parents and to all your brothers and sisters and may we meet soon and please give my greetings to everyone and to all the neighbors and anyone who asks after us .

Goodbye and as a gift from me your godmother Eleni Varipatakis in my next letter I will send you a memento two dollars to remember me and to buy yourself a pensil .

• • •

My father comes into the kitchen. He sets the basin on the table and takes off the orange gloves and washes his hands at the sink. Then he sits and smooths his hair which the wind had mussed and reaches for one of my cigarettes. His hands are shaking, his palms are red and wrinkled. Who knows how many loads of wash he did again today.

I’m making lamb chops, he says. And Dina from next door brought pastitsio. I’m not eating meat but I’ll boil some greens.

But he doesn’t get up from the chair. He sits with his elbows on the table twirling the lit end of his cigarette against the ashtray and staring at the letters spread before him.

I get up and pour another tsikoudia and look out the window. I can see the cream-colored bra and the panties with the kitten on them fluttering on the line. It occurs to me to ask if they were a present from him. Because I can’t imagine my mother going into a store and buying something like that. Panties with a kitten on them. Jesus. I certainly can’t imagine her wearing them. Panties with a kitten. A kitten with a red bow. My mother.

Did you read them?

He stubs out his cigarette and sweeps the pile of papers over to his side of the table and starts to neaten them.

Not all.

On the very top of the pile is the postcard with the ship. He grabs it and brings it up to his eyes then flips it over. He rests his glasses on his forehead and rubs his eyes with two fingers. He looks at the blue envelope with the red ribbon that I’ve set aside and the long letter from Atlant Siri. He picks up the ribbon and wraps it around his hand and ties a bow and then puts it in his coat pocket.

Did you read this one? he asks.

I did.

A thousand times better, he says. A thousand times better if she had left. They have good doctors there hospitals and machines and things. They don’t just let people die like a dog in the vineyard. Of course not. America America, he sings. How right they are who say your streets are paved with dreams of gold.

He rubs his eyes again, harder this time. The refrigerator is making strange noises. Crick Crack. As if there’s something alive in there that wants to get out. I read the tiny letters on the freezer door. I read the brand of the stove and of the toaster and of the clock on the wall. I’ll look at anything to avoid my father’s eyes.

Give me some of that.

He grabs my glass and takes a few sips. His Adam’s apple slowly rises then sinks back down to its place.

He sets the glass on the table and then stands and picks up the basin.

I’ve got a load of dark clothes in the machine, he says.

In the doorway he pauses and pulls his glasses down off his forehead and looks at me.

I didn’t know she wanted to go to America. What does it say in the letter? You wrote that I should find you a husband even if he’s old . She was sixteen years old. You know? Just a girl, sixteen years old. And she wanted to get married even if the groom was old. I never knew. I swear to you. She never said a thing to me. Forty-three years together and she never said a thing. Other people did, though. Sure. I heard from other people. We all take a secret with us to the grave. Big or small everyone has one. People told me but I didn’t believe. Impossible, I said. Lefteria and I won’t ever have secrets. Not in life and not in death, either. That’s what I said. Big words, sure. But I believed it. God knows I believed it. And now what’ll happen, can you tell me that? How are we supposed to live now.

He turns his head and looks at the letters splayed out over the table. His eyes seem so small and red behind his glasses. Two strange creatures staring petrified at the world from behind a glass wall.

Burn them, he says. Go out and burn them. Don’t throw them in the recycling. In a hundred years if the world still exists people will know everything about us and how we live now. Have you ever thought about that? How in a hundred years there won’t be any such thing as the past. Who am I kidding, a hundred. It’ll happen way faster. Sure. Time will be an endless present. Ever thought about that? Even our trash will still be around. That’s why we have to destroy whatever we can while we can. Memory without gaps isn’t memory. It’s death. Go out and burn them. Just don’t get any ash on the clothes out there. My back hurts from bending over the bathtub. Mind those clothes, you hear?

And then he leaves.

I pour another tsikoudia and drink it standing up in front of the window. Then I take a swig straight from the bottle.

I wonder if I should take my father to see a doctor.

I wonder what my mother did when she read that letter from Atlantic City.

I wonder if she closed her eyes and cried or if she forgot or if she kept on hoping. If that dress ever came if she wore it if she went to church. Whatever became of that dress, I wonder.

Outside the whole world is letting loose. The windowpanes are shuddering, the wind whistles through whatever crack it can find. My mother’s clothes are whirling on the line like captive ghosts struggling to escape.

I wonder if that memento ever arrived.

If those two dollars ever came from America, if my mother ever bought that pencil.

SEVEN MONTHS without a single dream. Seven whole months. The twenty-first of May was the last time I had a dream. I remember because it was also the last time it rained around here. And I remember because it was Lena’s name day and I said it was a good sign that it rained and I finally had a dream for the first time in a long time. But I haven’t since then. And it hasn’t rained again, either. No rain and no dreams. Dead silence.

Dreams and rain. Who knows. Maybe they go together these days.

Lena doesn’t care about the rain. She doesn’t care that it’s almost Christmas and it’s still twenty degrees outside. She doesn’t care that everyone’s walking around in short-sleeved shirts and outside the birds are singing like it’s April. She doesn’t care about dreams, either.

I don’t dream, she says. I’m better off without dreams. What good did dreams ever do me? I just have the same one all the time, that I’m falling off a cliff and there’s no one to catch me. Why sit there worrying about stupid dreams. You’ve got plenty else to worry about. Yesterday they called again from the appliance place and asked about our payments. We’re three months behind and this and that is going to happen if they take us to court. Did you hear? To court. Can you believe it? The guy had this tone of voice like he was talking to I don’t know who. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. To have him humiliate me like that, and there was nothing I could say. And if we have to go to court they’ll make us pay the lawyers’ fees, too. Are you listening? Why don’t you worry about that for a change. About stuff like that. Not dreams and rain.

She’s holding a strip of orange peel and slicing it into pieces with a knife. She’s already cut it into a thousand tiny slivers but she won’t stop won’t give up. She slices it into tiny pieces and then smaller ones and even smaller than that. A thousand slivers. And she’s still at it.