Let Me Explain You (34 page)

The Day She Left happened much, much earlier than The Day

    She Left.

Twelve times what a mother gives, when that mother gives zero,

    is still zero.

Six months after Stavros left his girls in Greece—first with his brother, who spent Stavros's money and fed them coffee and bread, then with his mother—he opened a diner. The single-room building had been a salt shed, which was good, because sprinkling salt in a Greek house got rid of an unwanted guest, and his unwanted guest was his past. Before the salt shed was a salt shed, it had been used to store coal. Its one real window opened to a brick wall not more than four inches away; the rest of the windows lined the very top of the wall. There was one cracked fluorescent lamp. Some fool, some immigrant, had installed a half-attempt sink and grill. They were both in decent condition, which meant that business had been bad for the previous owner. But that did not mean it had to be bad for Stavros.

Cheap, cheap enough for a man still learning English. Cheap enough for Hero to lend him the money.

“No,” Hero said. “I'm giving you money only to bring back the girls. That's the only money I'll give.”

“I bring the girls here, I have to send them back the next day or the next year. Hero, you know how these things go. A man will fail from a lack of something to stand on.”

“You are a family man first, Stavro. Then a businessman.”

“Yes, I am a family man, but to be a family man, you have to be a businessman.”

There was no point for Stavros to explain the apartment that still reeked of Dina or the trick of making a diaper work the way it was supposed to; the problem with turning a father into a mother. There was no way for Stavros to explain that without his own diner, everything he had done was a waste. He would think of nothing but his children, but first, he needed to make his diner a success.

Hero tapped his chin with some papers. “I don't think so.”

“Charge thirty percent interest. Give me two years, I pay.” This he said in English.

“It is not about the money.”

“Yes, it is about the money. For me, for you, for them, it is about the money.”

Yes, for some days he held Hero's money in his hands. Yes, for some days he thought about using money at Hero's twenty percent interest to go get his girls. It was a question he ground between his teeth. How many times he bit down on it, flattened it to a penny. But then what? Go back to dishwashing? Give all of his spit and nickels to the woman downstairs so she could barely keep her two eyes on his two daughters? No, these were not options. He bought the salt shed. He unlocked the latch on his very own
kafenio
and swept clumps of salt into the drainpipe, where it got foamy. A salt shed was not supposed to be the dream, but suddenly it was.

The first month, disaster. He got only some single customers, which meant he could expect only single money whether he was in the kitchen morning till dawn, which meant he could not afford to stock supplies and so was forced to send out his only waiter/host/busboy for ingredients when another single customer came in. When he had enough chicken, he found loafs of bread already at their ends. When he had enough olive oil, he panicked over the cucumber-less cucumber salad. Worst, his cooking was bad. He knew it. Everything, everything with too much salt. He could not get it out of his hair, his kitchen, his life. It seemed to fall down from God's mouth and into his recipes.

Close to default, close to putting on the apron in Hero's kitchen once more, but not close to defeat. Not close to going home. Never was he going home. Home did not exist. Home was this salt shed, the Galaktoboureko, which his six returning truckers called the Gala.

Then the
pappa
s
's daughter walked through the door. He did not see her, he was too busy scraping black gunk off of the grill. He said without looking, “No more Trucker Special today, we are finished,” because the only thing he could serve right now was coleslaw, bought in buckets and scooped out soupy. The men who came to the Gala were crazy about their cabbage and mayonnaise.

“You refer to all women as
karagogeas
, or just the ones who've seen you with your pants down?”

The Greek made him snap his head up, and then he realized who it was. Marina, with her shoulders and plank neck and runaway mouth. Marina, with her eyes and words full of sand, no matter what anyone has to say about it. Marina, more καррαγωγέας than any woman he had ever met, except maybe his wife. Marina, who had been watching from the wire fence the day his brothers burned off his
peos
. In public, Stavros had called her
keftedaki
like everyone else—Marina Meatball—the only villager with a worse nickname than his. She did not help things, chewing on garlic during recess, or so people said, so that none of the children talked to her. Except Stavros did, sometimes, when his brothers weren't looking. He and Marina threw olive pits to see whose would land farther; each time, they both insisted their own.

All that shared history turning up in this country made him yelp. He came around the counter.

She put down a suitcase the size of a grocery bag, and they hugged. She said, “You would think in a country this big, it would be difficult to locate a Greek. But talk to a Greek, and he will get you your Greek.”

He said, “Sit, sit.” He was overjoyed to see someone from home. He had seen his family recently, yes, but having a guest from home in his establishment, it thrilled him. It made him remember he was a person with dreams that people were watching from afar.

She sat. She took off the scarf tied around her neck. She looked around, said, “They said you were starting out on your own, just like an American.”

He had told his mother about the new business. It came across as much bigger than this saltshaker. But to Marina, he said, “This is how it works here. You start small, prove yourself big. Smart, if you think about it.”

“If that's how they do it here.”

He jumped up and began to make her coffee. He was a little shy because it had been a long time. She had gone to live with her father's sister when they were teenagers, because her aunt had three sets of twins and needed help cooking. She did not move back to the village until after Stavros left for America.

Marina accepted the mug from him with a thankful “Beautiful.” She said, “You have some pastry for this?”

He hadn't. They weren't on the menu yet, because he had no time for phyllo dough. He said, “Baker comes in the morning,” which he didn't. He said, “How long do you stay?”

“As long as it takes to make a life.” She took a sip, and a pleat of pleasure softened her face. He recalled this pleasure—a cup of
kafe
after being in transit for two days. It felt good to give that to her. Him doing something useful for a compatriot in need. He would not charge her. He said, “You are visiting someone?”

“No.”

“
Ela
, your father isn't here, is he?” He tipped his head to look out at the parking lot, but of course there was no real window for him to see through.

“He is not.”

“How is he? Your father.”

“The same. Running other people's lives.”

In English, Stavros said, “You must call him. He will be waiting to know if you are safe.”

In English, she cut back. “I didn't fly a hundred thousand miles from my father just to get a new one, Stavro.”

Gamoto
, her English was better.

Stavros sat back. He looked again at her suitcase. He had seen dogs bigger than this suitcase. It told him that she could not be planning to stay, but the look on her face, the way she was settled in the chair but also unable to settle into the chair, told him, yes, she was an immigrant. Yes, she had a time line that offered no comfort, because it offered no return ticket. And she was clearly alone. Probably, she had taken a bus directly here from the airport. Possibly, she had nowhere else to go and had actually gotten this address from his mother or some other onlooker. A glimmer of a plan worked its way into his eye—he could bring his girls back for Marina to watch, and in exchange he could give her a place to live. He could stop thinking about the things that were out of his control and get this place running, even if it ran miserably, no better than his father's wagon.

He said, “Do you have a place for the night?”

Marina returned the mug to its saucer. “My aunt's friend is renting me a place.”

“Are you looking for work? The best money is in child care.”

Marina guffawed. “Don't be stupid. I'm not here to raise your girls, Stavro. I'm here to cook for you so you can run this mousetrap.”

“Cook for me?”

Marina stood. “
Nai
. I'm going to make you a meal you believe in, and you're going to hire me to operate your kitchen.”

Stavros could not protest when she pushed her way through to the counter, because anything that would have stopped her would have been too hard for him to say. No, Marina, I can't hire you because I have no money. No, Marina, because in just a few days this failing business will close up its one room and turn back to salt. No, Marina, because I have been cooking food that tastes like sponge and you won't do any better than me because America is lousy at growing anything meant to be eaten. No, Marina, because the ingredients you are going to find are scraped to the bottom of the jar and it is impossible to make even a single good meal from the snakeskin options of my kitchen.

Ela
, she was so dumpy in his diner, the
keftedaki
. It was depressing him.

Marina was back there with her fat elbows in his refrigerator. Marina was making a quick pile of food too insignificant even in weight to count as a meal. He spotted a fourth of an onion, a tomato, a diamond of animal fat, a leftover bone that she was roasting in the one-foot-wide oven for almost fifteen minutes now. Then she toasted a stale piece of bread. She whisked together a soft lemon, the last drips of olive oil, some kind of green herb that she picked out of the garden of her pocket, and she poured it all over the marrow that she scooped from the bone. Everything went on the toast. On the side, an onion marmalade, plus a squash he had thrown out, which she skinned and revived.

She said, “Eat.” She would not sit until he broke off a piece of the bread.

He put it in his mouth and chewed. The bread, crispy. The marrow, like the best parts of a leftover stew. Salty and congealed. Like he was getting to dunk his bread in his mother's pot while the whole house was sleeping, like the flavor could make him drunk if it got loose. Only, it was too salty. He wanted to ask where, where did this come from. He said, “
Ela
, it's nice. But I don't know if anyone could believe in it.”

Marina broke off a piece of the bread, tasted. She chewed. “Maybe your head doesn't want to believe in it, but your mouth is already converting your stomach.”

“Americans don't eat like this, Marina. When you get into the business like I have, you will realize that.”

“You and I will show them how to eat.”

He ate more, not too fast, not giving her the wrong idea. But he was starving, and it was nice, the nicest thing since Hero's
galaktoboureko
. It was wonderful to be given a meal by a woman who knew how to make meat out of bones. His mother had been like that. Something he wished he had appreciated as a young man.

Marina said, “You are no fool, Stavro, or else Marina would not be here. I know you—if you have any sense, it's business sense.”

She was buttering him up like a fat leg of lamb, and he was enjoying it more than the marrow. “OK, one good meal. But how do I know you have the training to excel my business?”

Marina uncrossed her arms from her safe of a chest. She broke off another piece of toast. She chewed the way a man chews, the way a priest chews: everyone could wait until she had formulated her thought. And it was this: “Stavro, while you were here making babies and trouble for yourself, I was with my aunt in Crete. Making breakfast out of trees and lunch out of nests and dinner out of smoke. You learned some things, I learned some things. I can do this for us.”

“Don't pretend this is for me. You're trying to get fat on the riches.” He could talk to her like this, so far from the
pappas
. If she wanted to be in America, she would have to get used to hostility, even from other Greeks. Especially from other Greeks. If she wanted to work, she had to prove she could handle it, move up the greasy ladder like he had.

“Marina wastes nothing. Every part of a goat, every leaf of a vegetable. It all gets made into money.”

He could tell she was not lying. Or lying like a Greek lies, which is exaggeration, which is not lying at all, really. Marina took the last toast and caught him looking at it. She pulled it apart, a piece so small it would not have given hope to a mouse, and gave half to him.

It was the wrong thing to do. All he could think was,
She sees how I am desperate.

“I will be in at six in the morning tomorrow. You will come in at eight. You make a big, fat sign to call in your truckers. I will cook them a meal that leaves them hungrier. You don't pay me until that toy register of yours hits four hundred. At four hundred dollars, we buy ingredients, and we split what's left. We make this place more than what it is.”

He heard what she was saying, and shame filled the empty cup of his life. This village woman, this spectator, was telling him that without her he had nowhere to go but further down. Nothing could have made him angrier, except the ugly face of his wife saying it. He wanted to make Marina leave, even as he was already missing the promising children and grandchildren of the meal he had just eaten, even as he wanted to weep,
You've come too late. I would, but it is just too late.