Traveling Light (28 page)

Whipping open the front door, she chased Sigmund around the living room, flapping her arms and yelling until she’d shoved him out the door. Locking it, she put the chain on, too, as if Sigmund could articulate the front latch and pick the lock. She then ran into the bathroom, quickly cranking shut the casement window and locking it. The window screen was on the floor along with a few telltale feathers.

Then, hiding behind one of the living room drapes, she peered out the front window.

The bird had perched on the woodpile just under the eaves by the front door. The slump of his shoulders made her feel sorry for him, but not sorry enough to let him back in. His profile looked haggard, forlorn, in the outdoor light as he looked out into the rain.

“What the hell am I feeling sorry for?” she cried. Reluctantly she climbed back upstairs. She tried but couldn’t fall asleep.

“Crap.” She crept back down after about twenty minutes and peeked out again to see if the bird was still there. Sigmund made eye contact the instant she looked. She exhaled in exasperation and placed her forehead against the door. “Oh shit.”

Finally she opened the front door and Sigmund tottled foot by foot back in.

CHAPTER 11

Two weeks had passed when Eleni called one afternoon.

“Hey, Mom,” Paula said, walking back to the guesthouse with Fotis after her shift. Her head still swirled thinking about the eagle on his first day of rehab in the flight room with Rick. As soon as she’d set the bird down, he’d swooped up in one motion; her heart had taken flight with him. His wings made flicking sounds, and he landed effortlessly on the top rung of the flight cage.

“Impressive,” Rick said, “considering.” She’d been amazed, too. “Bravo,” flew out of her. The eagle had then turned to look down at her, presiding from his new vantage point. Later that day she and Rick had dragged a fresh deer carcass—roadkill dropped off by a construction crew—into the center of the room. The eagle had soared down and landed within inches of her, claiming the carcass. The sudden whoosh of air made her turn. The eagle’s expression seemed to say,
Yes, we’re friends, but this is mine.

“What’s up, Mom?” Paula asked immediately. Eleni only called when something was wrong. It always was Paula who called, knowing Eleni lived on such a limited income.

“I don’t know, Paula.” Eleni’s voice was small. Paula looked at her phone, but the signal was strong enough.

“Ma?” Paula stopped walking. She glanced down at the scattering of orange leaves as if they would help sharpen her hearing. “Are you okay?”

“It seems I made a mistake.”

“A mistake,” Paula repeated. “What kind of mistake?” It was a word she’d never heard from her mother. She saw ambulances, critical-care units, thinking the worst. Paula’s heart banged her ribs. “Is everything all right?”

Eleni was quiet.

“Mom?”

She began to explain. It seemed that Slimowitz the cutter had gone on vacation and forgotten to cut the last two coats for Eleni to finish. In a pinch, Eleni had offered to cut the pelts so they could meet the deadline. Even though she’d worked as a cutter for Pappas’ late father twenty years earlier, the current boss had forbidden her from touching the pelts until he could find another cutter. Two days had passed with Eleni sitting around, twiddling her thumbs and obsessing, counting down the hours until the runway show in Milan. After the third day, she defied her boss and cut the pelts.

“I thought I was helping out.” Eleni paused.

“It sounds like you were.” Paula listened, eager for Eleni to wade through the prolonged silences and get to the point.

“Oh, Paula.” Eleni’s tone was upsetting; Paula had never heard her mother sound so beaten.

“So what happened?” Paula fought to stay calm.

“I used the wrong pattern—a different designer’s patterns.”

“So couldn’t you just get more fur from the supplier?” Paula asked.

“It was a special order.”

“Shit.”

“The designer hit the ceiling, Paula. Pappas said my time is over.”

Months ago Eleni had mentioned that Pappas had begun relegating her to the less important jobs, sewing labels, linings, alterations.

“He fired me,” Eleni whispered. “He fired me, Paula.” Eleni’s voice broke. “Told me to get my things and get out. Just like that.” Paula heard Eleni snap her fingers. “He stood over me, Paula, waiting.” Her mother began to cry in spastic gasps. “Like I was a criminal. Almost fifty years working for that family—for his father, God-rest-his-soul, giving my all to them, working weekends, holidays. And then this kid fires me, standing over me like I’m some dirtbag.”

Paula’s fury rose in an instant. She wobbled with rage.

“I’ll call the son of a bitch myself.”

“No,” Eleni almost shouted.

Paula’d always despised the younger Pappas and in fact had hated the entire family since she was a teenager. They acted like Greek royalty. They’d give her mother orders as if she were a scrubwoman and not a highly esteemed tailor and seamstress known throughout the City’s fur industry. As if it were a duchy, the wives and daughters would waft through the workroom in chiffon and pearls while Paula’s mother sewed—still hunched over her work after they’d all left for the evening in their Lincoln Continentals. Young Paula would sit on the showroom floor doing her homework as her mother worked, or she’d fall asleep using a pile of ranch mink for a pillow until Eleni’s nudge that it was time to go home.

Even now Paula’s stomach tightened whenever her mother talked about work. The place was a sweatshop. They paid her almost nothing—docked her check if she had a doctor’s appointment. One peep and they’d start to make noises about outsourcing. And what Paula found most revolting was how Eleni would cower in gratitude when talking about the Pappas Fur Empire, as if standing in church before the very icon of Jesus, waiting to make her cross and kiss it.

But the job had made Eleni proud of not being a
klossa,
or sitting hen. While the women around her had grown fat, idle and mean, Eleni had supported her young daughter and herself well into old age without anyone’s help. And for that she’d greeted each day with a place to go, a job to do and beautiful creations that came to life out of nothing but skins.

Paula closed her eyes. Her heart sank as she pictured Eleni alone in her dimly lit apartment. Vulnerable like the great horned owl who’d helplessly flopped about on the forest floor, yet different in that Paula and Eleni had no mates to protect them. Paula could have cried right there and then, for her mother, for the eagle and for herself—for all the years she’d spent alone and abandoned as a girl, then as a wife.

“Mom,” Paula said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Eh, Akri, Paula, einai akri,” Eleni minimized the depth of hurt, claiming that only the edges of her body were injured, but Paula knew better. Time would drag on forever in Eleni’s darkened apartment with no one to talk with except Stavraikis, who heard practically nothing.

“Mom, listen. Let me fly you out here,” Paula offered. “You can stay with me—like a little vacation. You never take vacations; going to Greece is not a vacation.” Paula lived by the clock in Greece, feeling she’d earned at least a paycheck after enduring days of family visits. “I’ll arrange it all. Just pack a few things—I have a washer/dryer,” Paula encouraged. She started to feel excited. “It’s beautiful out here, Mom. I’ll get you a ticket; you can fly out tomorrow. I’ll arrange for a car to pick you up, take you to the airport.”

Eleni was crying. Humiliation crying, the kind you want to hide, only your shame has become larger than your pride.

“Aww—don’t cry, Mom.” The instant she said it, Paula wished she hadn’t. “It’s a hell of a lot easier flying here than to Greece.” She tried to make a joke. “I’ve got plenty of room.” She looked at the outside of the guesthouse. “It’s a cozy little place.” Eleni could have the bed or the futon if she was too nervous about the stairs. “I’ll meet you at the airport, Mom; you don’t have to worry about a thing. We’ll drive along the shore together to my place. It’s a beautiful drive, Ma. Like nothing you’ve ever seen. We can talk, visit.”

She could hear her mother thinking.

“You always did love to drive,” Eleni said.

“I do.”

“You still have Theo’s dog?”

“Of course.”

There was silence for a few moments, as if that was the deciding factor.

“It was very sad, Paula. Only me and Fanourakis, his nephew, showed up.” She began to cry again. “Nobody else came. Nobody.”

“Yeah, I know, Ma; you told me.”

She could hear her mother’s breath. “I’d have to pack and all.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve got a washer and dryer.”

“I’d have to get to the airport.”

“I’ll arrange it all.”

Except for Greece, Paula’s mother had never been out of New York. She sounded frightened.

“Ma, we have toilet paper, refrigeration, electricity out here.”

Laughter interrupted Eleni’s crying.

“You have an iron?”

“Sure.” She didn’t but was sure she could buy one at the Ben Franklin. Maggie or Rick would have one she could borrow.

“If I can find a flight, Ma, would tomorrow give you enough time to pack?”

“You’re a good girl, Paula,” her mother said. “Yes. That’s plenty of time.”

*   *   *

At ten o’clock the next morning at the Duluth airport, Paula spotted Eleni on the down escalator heading toward the baggage claim. Paula had never seen her mother outside of New York or Athens. Eleni stood out on the crowded escalator stairs, high cheekbones, her face retaining that classic, stoic look though her dyed red hair looked matted after the long flight. The color clashed with her dark olive skin under the airport lights, yet she still had an accidental poise that came natural to her. Despite her age, she was a dignified, old-world elegant woman, a type you rarely saw these days. Wearing dark yet stylish-looking clothes, she was handsomely formal, unlike the midwestern informality. Paula spotted the long, thick gold chain that was Eleni’s trademark, brightly announcing her life, as it held Vassili’s wedding ring, an Eastern Greek cross, a bright blue evil eye and a pendant of the Parthenon. While Paula was struck with pride, it also hurt her to see how dramatically her mother stood out—the alien, still the foreigner. Paula rushed to get to Eleni quickly. Before the others noticed how out of place she was. Even the form and outline of her body, proportioned differently, was vivid and distinct, like an apparition from an early 1900s photograph of immigrants flooding New York Harbor but Photoshopped onto an escalator, passing under the post-modern neon-lit sculpture of a moose suspended from the ceiling.

“Mom,” Paula cried, elbowing her way through a group of people. Eleni turned. Pain wrenched her face as she reached for Paula. They grasped like they hadn’t seen each other in years.

“Thank you,” Eleni uttered into Paula’s shoulder.

“For what?”

“For understanding.”

“You’ve done the same for me.”

“Yes. I have.”

All those years ago, when Paula escaped on the subway with a shopping bag full of her clothes after husband number one had taken a swipe at her. Eleni had asked no questions as she’d opened the apartment door and taken the heavy bag from Paula’s hand, her daughter collapsing on her shoulder.

“Thank you for coming, Mom.” They stood there for several more moments.

“Paula,” Eleni whispered, and clutched her tighter. “My Paula.”

“It’s gonna be okay, Mom,” Paula said. “I promise. You’ll see; everything’s gonna work out.” She had nothing to go on but strong conviction.

The loud buzzer in the baggage claim startled them both, a warning to stand clear. People pressed in as suitcases and duffel bags began to stream out. The two women still held on. Paula spotted Eleni’s bag. Without letting go, Paula reached for it but missed. Instead, she’d surrendered to the hug, figuring the bag would come around again.

Her gesture prompted a nice-looking man to turn and ask, “You need help?”

Paula nodded. “You mind grabbing that green bag that just got away?”

The man sprang into action, grabbed the bag and placed it next to Eleni.

Paula mouthed,
Thanks.

Eleni let go and turned. “What a nice man you are.”

Paula loaded Eleni’s suitcase into the back of the Escape and opened the passenger door, helping her mother up onto the seat.

“Nice car,” Eleni said, and began scoping out the interior. “Is it yours?” she asked as Paula helped her locate the other end of the seat belt.

“Yep,” Paula said. “All mine.”

“
Uch ooo,
Paula, this must have cost a fortune.”

She felt her mother glaring over at her.

“Not as expensive as some.”

“But expensive enough. Where’d you get this kind of money? Does Roger know you spent all this?”

Paula sighed and didn’t answer. As they headed toward the parking ramp exit, Paula explained that the car got good gas mileage. Eleni tried to sound cheery about it but seemed to give up before they reached the parking attendant. She seemed tired, indifferent or both. Eleni didn’t even flip down the sun visor or at least feel for a mirror on the back to fix her hair and check her lipstick, which she always did in her own car. Sometimes she’d drive with the visor down—more concerned about getting her eyebrow pencil right than missing a traffic light. But now Eleni’s eyes were dull; her prying questions about the Escape lacked the usual bite that would have progressed into a critique of Paula’s spending habits. Eleni was a toothless dragon.

They reached the parking exit and Paula handed over two dollars. The gate lifted and they headed toward downtown Duluth, and then toward Highway 61.

“This is it, Mom,” Paula said with feigned exaggeration. “You’re in beautiful downtown Duluth.” Her hand gestured across the windshield and she got a smirk out of Eleni. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really.” Eleni looked passively out at the trees and at a multistory black iron drawbridge on the lakeshore that caught her attention.

“The drive’s a bit over an hour,” Paula explained. “We can stop if you get hungry.”