Chapter 38
38
Christos rushed into the apartment and slammed the door so hard the worry beads his mother kept on a hook just inside fell to the floor.
‘Christo!’ Angeliki gasped, hand to her chest.
‘I am now deaf!’ Magdalena added.
‘Why are you both here?’ he spat back, thumping his frappé container down on the counter. ‘Why are you not at work?’
‘Wow,’ Magdalena said. ‘Good morning, brother.’
‘Where have you been?’ Angeliki asked. ‘What has put you into a temper?’
‘I am not in a temper!’ he yelled.
Magdalena laughed. ‘You need to work on your ability to hide that.’
‘Like you need to work on your ability to hide your boyfriend,’ he snapped.
The second the words were out of his mouth, the moment he saw the despair on his sister’s face he wanted to claw the sentence back.
‘What?!’ Angeliki exclaimed.
‘You are a shit, Christo!’ Magdalena yelled and without saying anything else, tears already spilling from her eyes, she was out of the front door and slamming it even harder than he had.
And now he didn’t know what to do. His head was pounding, his thoughts were more jumbled up than all the junk in his godfather’s flat and his mother was looking at him like she didn’t know what was going on in their family at all. There was only one thing he could do…
‘Mama, when did you last go to Athens?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Angeliki asked, hands in the air in exasperation. ‘Your sister has a boyfriend? And you knew?! Who is this boy?!’
‘Mama, I asked you a question,’ Christos continued.
‘I do not have time for questions. I need to do a changeover at the villa before eleven. Where are my keys?’ She gasped, picking up her handbag. ‘And where is the cat?’
‘Mama!’
‘Why are you asking me about Athens? You know when I went there. It was a school trip! We went to visit a university and we saw the Acropolis. It was too hot and too busy and I threw up on the coach back.’
She was lying to him. And he had the proof right here in his pocket. He pulled out the photo he had taken from Maria’s last night and put it on the countertop between them.
‘So,’ Christos said, his fingers still at the picture. ‘What is this?’
Silence reigned. There was no rapid-fire rattling on about villa changeovers or his sister’s love life. His mother’s eyes were on the photograph and her expression was almost pained.
‘Where did you get this?’ Angeliki asked him.
‘It was at Maria’s. Why is that the most important question for you?’
‘That is impossible,’ Angeliki said. ‘Why would you say that?’
‘Mama, this is you in Athens when you are an adult. When you have always said you have not been there since you were at school.’
‘Why does it matter, Christo? So I went to Athens another time. It is only a short flight away from here as you know and?—’
‘And it is a short flight away that you have been so reluctant to take to visit me!’
‘Things are… different now. I have many jobs and there is never enough time and… please do not ask me anything else.’
The last sentence left him stunned. His mother was as emotional as he had ever seen her. There were tears in her eyes and there was a definite tremble on her lips. This was so much more than a sightseeing visit she had failed to mention, something that ‘didn’t matter’. As he had suspected from the moment he saw the picture, this was something significant.
‘Who did you go to Athens with, Mama?’ Christos asked. He was holding his breath, elongating his frame, trying to prepare himself for an answer he was almost certain was going to change something.
‘No,’ Angeliki said with fierce determination. ‘I cannot talk about this now, Christo.’
‘And there is something to talk about, yes? Maybe like the fact that you have told people, even your own sister, that our father had another woman rather than admit that he was vicious and violent to you?’
‘No,’ Angeliki said again, this time putting her handbag on her shoulder and turning towards the door. ‘I cannot do this now.’
‘We need to talk about what happened with Papa,’ Christos said. ‘Because we never have. We never do.’
‘With good reason! Because they are bad memories, painful memories!’
‘So you lock them away and never revisit them? Close it all down and never deal with it? Last night you said that?—’
‘I do not know what has put you in this mood, Christo, but it is not good, not good at all.’ She put her hand on the doorknob.
‘What has got me in this mood are the secrets in this family! And then there is the lack of emotional capability that has been handed down through the generations so that when I like someone I cannot tell them and use honesty, I have to make a business plan and then I get angry when they do not understand the ununderstandable!’
‘Christo, I?—’
‘Just go to work!’ he interrupted. ‘You can keep your secrets and I… will make plans to return to Athens because, after Vaggelis’s service, there is absolutely no reason for me to stay!’
With that said, he tore towards his childhood bedroom, crashed inside and slammed the door.