Let Me Explain You (7 page)

Whatever she wanted, it certainly wasn't to marry one of her father's assistants.

Stavroula said, “Remember the time he got so pissed he threw a plate of spaghetti?” The pasta had stuck to the ceiling, dangled like streamers.

“Yeah, that was the last time Mom cleaned up any food tantrums.” Ruby snickered. She quoted their father. “ ‘See all the abusion I take from yous?' ” He had been justified in throwing his plate, he said, because he was a hardworking man with no peace, and all these women were taking years off his life.

“Remember when the school asked for donations for the bake sale and he sent scrapple?”

Ruby said, “Remember the first time he brought home a rutabaga, he tried to light it?”

That one was good! “Like a candle.” Stavroula said, “Remember Toast Delight?” Disgusting when he nuked it.

“Remember the pink shirt?” It hung in his closet, but it wasn't his, he swore. He didn't wear pink hunkies, meaning hankies, and said it must have belonged to the fruity who lived there before them. That time he got so mad at their teasing, he sent the hunky down the garbage disposal.

Stavroula said, “Remember when Mother was sick and for the first time ever he got her a get-well card? He put it on her nightstand? He didn't sign it or even put it in the envelope? He didn't realize it was in braille? He didn't even know what braille was?”

“You always tell that one.”

“It was just a big fat smiley face on the front of the card. No words at all. The only way to read it was to touch it?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“He was like, ‘So that's what those little bumps on the elevator mean.' ”

“Remember the time he wrote a letter to his daughters about how he's going to die in ten days, and here's everything that's fucked up about them?”

“I remember. Reminds me of the day I got my master's in culinary arts and he called just to read the names of lawyers off his place mats.”

Ruby pushed her plate back, and the busboy removed it wordlessly. She'd taken ten, twelve bites max. Lunch was free, of course, but a generous tip for the boys who would arrange for anything more she could want. She never wanted anything.

Ruby said, “I'm over it.”

“You're not the only one.”

“He's so dumb. A goat comes to him in a dream, and then it shows up at the diner, and now he thinks he's gonna die.”

“He told you this? You went to see him?”

Ruby said, “No, he left me a voice mail and told me not to tell any of you.”

“This is all because of a goat? Let's just butcher it.”

“You can't butcher the goat. He's the goat,” Ruby said. “Anyway, next week we'll get emails about how he's starting a fig farm or something.”

“Remember the time he planted cacti in the backyard in case he ever got cancer?”

“I'm tired of talking about it, Stevie. He's just whining because nobody's paying attention to him.”

“We never stop paying attention to him,” Stavroula said.

Ruby smiled. It was compassionate, confident. “I do.”

Stavroula didn't believe her. Then she did. It was hard to tell with Ruby. Stavroula was still trying to understand the adult version of her sister. Stavroula had left home early; her father's motto had been I Made It On My Own And So Should You, and Mother agreed with him. Or maybe it was Mother's idea. All Stavroula knew was that suddenly, at age seventeen, she was alone and angry and taking care of herself in every way. When things got hard and she had no one to turn to, she reached out to Marina—but Marina did not get involved in family matters, that was one of Marina's many rules. When things got desperate, Stavroula went to church—once. What Stavroula got from the one prayer she put together for God was that she was on her own. She stood, made the sign of the cross, and put herself through culinary school. She was grateful for her independence, there was no doubt about that, but those years of self-sufficiency had fermented something in her. She could feel, some days, her very veins filled with vinegar, but that was OK. Because vinegar is potent, versatile. There are a hundred and fifty common applications for vinegar. Vinegar is self-preserving. And if you wait long enough, it makes its own mother.

Stavroula could have gone anywhere with her credentials and experience, but somehow she ended up returning to the area for the evolving Philly food scene. She was slowly working her way back into the family. She had missed all of the years that gave Ruby her nuances. She missed important stuff. Like the time Ruby was thirteen and a pack of waves almost dragged her and Mother out to the Mediterranean. They had to anchor themselves to volcanic rock, and by the time a fisherman discovered them, they had almost no fingernails. Stavroula hadn't even heard this story until a few weeks ago, and the way Ruby told it made her think it happened to a different Ruby, which it did, because it seemed everything did. Stavroula imagined how her father must have handled that scare. Husband, protector, he had been onshore, unaware, drinking coffee . . . after they were rescued, he was still onshore, unaware, drinking coffee.

The morning after their father sent the email, Stavroula texted Mother, YOU IN BLACK YET? Mother had texted back with a picture of herself in a vampiric black cloak, which Stavroula recognized from a costume trunk.

Then Stavroula asked Ruby, nonchalant as she could manage, “Did you show Dave?”

For years, their father had been demanding that Ruby break up with her boyfriend, Dave. The problem with Dave was that since he had been released from the army, all he wanted was a platoon. He spent time with his boys at intramural soccer, he spent time with his boys—none of them even in the same room, mind you—playing first-person shooters with titles like
R3venge
. He rolled with his boys to laser tag and the club and the diner. OK, he was taking a few college courses, but Dave had no real plan. What he said he wanted more than anything—if only Mr. Mavrakis would give him a seed loan—was to own his own business, a bicycle repair shop. What he needed, in Stavroula's estimation, was somebody to give him orders.

“Yeah, I sent him the email. Doesn't matter, though.”

“Why not?”

“It's already done.”

“What's done?” Though she knew. Guessed, anyhow.

“We eloped,” Ruby said. She took a nice long drink of Stavroula's watery frappe.

It was not the email that made Ruby elope. Ruby had eloped
three days before
the email. She did not tell her sisters about it. She did not tell Mother, but Mother found out, of course. Mother was arranging Ruby's things. Ruby did not like anyone to touch her shit, but Mother was an exception. Mother was installing a brand-new closet organizer, because the day before, Ruby, overwhelmed, had said she was going to throw all of her burning, flaming shit off an overpass and into the Delaware. She wanted something different, couldn't she have something for herself and for Dave? That was why Mother was picking up Ruby's clothes from the bedroom floor and sorting them—to alleviate Ruby's stress. Stavroula had dropped by the house but Mother didn't hear her come in. Stavroula was going to announce herself but felt, as the seconds built on each other, that she had no right to be there. She couldn't bring herself to break the silence. Instead she watched unseen as Mother lovingly picked up Ruby's things, stacking the jeans with the seams facing one way. That folding, each pair of pants stacked on another, was how Mother sensed a similar layering happening in her daughter's life. Pant leg on pant leg, hand on hand. Spirit on spirit, voice on voice. The seams in the heap of denim ran together to spell a message:
Mrs.
This was the story that Mother told, anyway, a few minutes later when Ruby called to tell her the news.

“I knew it, goddamnit,” she breathed. “He better be ready to give you a good life.”

Ruby said something Stavroula couldn't make out. Mother responded, “We can do it together now,” and she began listing ideas for a wedding. There would be a harp player. Downstairs Stavroula put the oven on low, warmed up the tray of lasagna that she had baked for Mother, and went back to her one-bedroom in Philadelphia. She wondered if Ruby was pregnant.

Her father was right; Dave could have used more ambition. The way Dave spoke reminded Stavroula of some kind of nut butter—words and thoughts stuck to the roof of his mouth. But, honestly, who would be good enough for Ruby? Something Stavroula and her father had in common, and Litza, and Mother: they wanted only the best for her.

Stavroula said, “Are you going to tell him you're married now?”

“Who?”

“Dad.”

“I'm not gonna keep it from him.”

There it was, the thing that separated them: if it had been Stavroula, she would have gone along in secret. If the elopement had been a chicken, Stavroula would have plucked its feathers and boiled it down to dumpling. No, Stavroula reminded herself: that was before. Post-email Stavroula was wide open. She was writing poetry about a woman and selling it to the public at mealtime. She was eating chicken and smearing her face in the drippings and wearing the bones like a necklace.

Ruby brought a napkin to her mouth. For the first time Stavroula caught the trifle on her sister's ring finger.

The kitchen was beginning to get hectic, Stavroula could sense it. An order—July's voice—broke through the atrium. Something sluglike smeared itself against Stavroula's stomach and left a slimy trail, like a dog tongue on a window or like okra. July was seeing the menu for the first time. Stavroula stood and asked one of the boys to get Ruby a frappe to go. She put her hands on her waist to give the impression that she was composed but obligated. “Sounds like I'm needed.”

A nod, then Ruby took up her jeweled phone. She said, “Catch you at the wake.”

Marina had taught her: in the kitchen, there are three kinds of proxemics. Intimate = six to eighteen inches. The people who cook with you, or the people you cook for, they fall within this reach. Often, you're coming into actual physical contact. Sometimes the closeness is too much, and this is when dropping your eyes helps. Stavroula, of course, having been trained by Marina, was not one to drop hers. Social = four to twelve feet—her kitchen vs. the dining room, her staff vs. the waitstaff—the distance at which most precise work takes place over a fourteen-hour shift. At once estranged and familiar, Marina explained, social distance creates the phenomenon that a good waiter senses, without being told, what the kitchen is short on and makes a perfect alternate recommendation. Like a lover loping gracefully despite the darkness. Despite it,
koukla
. But anything over twelve feet was public distance. Supreme formality, plus enough space to escape in case of danger or awkwardness.

And here was plenty of both coming at her. Here was July, a good fifteen feet away, pushing through the prep cooks who knew not to get in the way, staring her down. The dress could have made Stavroula's menu—fuchsia, ripples at the bottom. Two gold earrings like the knobs of a dresser, the white wedges that Stavroula was fond of and that revealed three, almost four painted toes. Her arms tanner than they should be in April and a little too thin. July held them apart from her body, a gesture both welcoming and repelling. A fence, closed but maybe not locked. Her smile, tailored and difficult to interpret. The smile of a hostess, which she often was. She was holding the menu. Clutching the menu?

And July, moving straight through public space and into social—

For the first two years, they had worked at this distance.
How are you, Fine, Enjoy your day off, This your umbrella?
This was mostly because July left as soon as her shift was over and kept her office door closed, and Stavroula was not the friendliest. She felt entitled to her temper, just like her father, because she was good at her job. Ask July if she cared about a chef's petty demands? Or tolerated how controlling Stavroula was? The standoff continued until they both got weary of it, and soon they were the only two women on staff. They started to get a little more personal, but not too personal.

Then came the day they crossed into intimate. A year ago. It was the sun that coaxed them out to the bench on the narrow green behind the restaurant. They peeled oranges. July got up and stretched out on the ground, even though the ground still held the mule cold of early April. She propped herself up with her elbows. She could have stretched out her bare feet onto Stavroula's lap. She was saying, “I don't believe you.”

“You should,” Stavroula said. “It's something I've just always been able to do.”

July gestured at Ramos coming up the alley. “What about him?”

Stavroula punctured the orange with her thumb at the thickest part of the rind. One of her claims was that she could remove the skin in a single peel. The other was that she could instantly tell what someone had last eaten by appearance alone. She called out to Ramos, and he said, “Good morning, Chef.”