Chapter 48
48
THE BAROS’S APARTMENT, KASSIOPI
Coffee with Magdalena had turned into more coffee with her boyfriend, Spiros, before he had given them a lift back to Kassiopi. As hard as Christos had tried to find something wrong with his sister’s boyfriend – as he believed was his right as an older brother – he had found nothing to dislike apart from his football allegiance to AEK rather than Olympiacos. There was still time, obviously, but he also had to remember that Magdalena did have a sensible head on her shoulders, and he must not turn into an overprotective relative when she had their mother to contend with already. And that was who he was going to face now.
Taking a deep breath, he opened the front door… and was hit with the most toxic scent and a cloud of smoke. Was the apartment on fire?
Before that thought could really take root, he heard his aunt’s voice.
‘Christo, is that you?’
‘What is going on? Where are you? And what is burning?’ He could barely see anything through the white smoke, navigating the space using his hands on cabinets and chairs to find a path.
‘It is sage,’ Maria said, her form coming into focus at last. ‘We are releasing all the negative energy out of this space and it is taking some time.’
We . It was then he saw his mother, in the kitchen area, opening the windows presumably to clear the atmosphere and, allegedly, the dark essence.
‘We had to disable the smoke detectors,’ Maria added.
Now Christos could see she had a thick smoking wad of leafage in her hands and there was more burning in a jar on the kitchen counter. He pulled the door of his bedroom closed.
‘What are you doing, Christo?’ Maria asked with a gasp. ‘You do not want your room to be cleansed?’
‘I do not want it to be filled with smoke.’
His mother was busying herself with nothing. Picking up the coffee pot, putting it down again, fanning out the tea towel and hanging it over the bar of the oven door, anything but look at him.
‘But, it will not work with closed doors,’ Maria stated. ‘Everything has to be free-flowing and?—’
‘And how about conversation,’ Christos suggested. ‘Is there a chance that can be free-flowing too?’
‘Well,’ his aunt began, wafting the sage in the air, ‘if it can be conversation without releasing negativity then… what do you think, Angeliki?’
Christos looked at his mother. Her usual straight, shoulders back, foreboding stance as depleted as her nature. Then she met his gaze, her eyes heavily ringed, probably through lack of sleep and emotion, sadness emanating from every part of her. She managed a nod.
‘OK, good,’ Maria said. ‘This is good. So, I shall leave you and?—’
‘No,’ Angeliki said with, what seemed like, the most force she could muster.
‘You want me to stay?’ Maria asked, looking for confirmation.
Angeliki nodded again. ‘If we can get rid of this smoke so we all don’t die.’
‘I will open the patio doors,’ Christos said, moving through the fug.
* * *
‘It should never have happened,’ Angeliki said a little later. They were all sitting around the table, glasses of Metaxa brandy that Maria had poured in front of them.
Christos shook his head. ‘Please, Mama, do not start this way. What is that supposed to mean? Because it did happen, and questioning what should have or could have is not appropriate when I exist.’
‘Christos is right,’ Maria agreed. ‘The time has passed for regrets.’
‘I did not say I regretted it,’ Angeliki quickly retorted. ‘Of course I do not regret it, or you, Christo. I simply meant that I should have made different choices. At the time. Before. Afterwards.’ She sighed and looked to Maria. ‘I asked you to stay, Maria, because I have not been honest with you either. At all.’
‘Oh?’ Maria said, looking a little confused.
‘Please, Christo, I am not going to say this to look for sympathy or to explain away keeping this from you for so long but… I should not have made excuses for your father…’ She paused before continuing. ‘For Andreas.’
‘I am having a drink,’ Maria said, putting the brandy glass to her lips.
‘Andreas didn’t leave me for someone else, Maria,’ Angeliki said softly. ‘Andreas left us, the whole family, because Christos made him. Because Christos had to make him before he put one of us in hospital.’
‘What?!’ Maria exclaimed. ‘Andreas hurt you?! Hurt the children?! For how long did he do this?’
Christos watched his mother’s face crumple, lips quivering, eyes blinking away tears.
‘Our… whole marriage,’ Angeliki admitted.
‘Angeliki!’ Maria exclaimed. ‘Why did you not tell me?! Why did you say nothing?!’
‘Why do you think?’ Angeliki shouted. ‘Because to admit this is like saying the marriage is a failure. You know how it works! I would be the failure, the one doing things wrong for her husband. Because there would have to be a reason for him to act this way, and that reason would have been me!’
Maria shook her head, tears dropping from her eyes now as she took another sip of brandy. ‘Angeliki, I would not have let anyone tell you any of those things!’
‘The church? The mayor? You would stand up to them and say they are wrong?’
‘Yes!’ Maria exclaimed. ‘I am not afraid of the truth like other people, Angeliki. And you should know that!’
‘And how my husband would have reacted if he knew I had told people the truth?’ Angeliki asked. ‘Would I even be here now?’
Maria shook her head again, like she was hearing things she believed but did not want to. Christos could feel the shock radiating from her, and he knew telling her sister was a big move for his mother.
‘Vaggelis asked me to marry him first,’ Angeliki continued. ‘I thought he was playing a joke on me. He always did that, didn’t he? Made jokes, made people laugh. We were good friends but I had not ever looked at him that way. You know, don’t you, if you feel a certain way about someone and, for me, that was always with Andreas.’
‘Imagine,’ Maria said. ‘If you had married the best friend. How different things could have been.’ She shook her head.
‘But you said yourself the time for regrets has passed and, I said, back then, Vaggelis was this funny, awkward, larger-than-life character who just didn’t make me feel how a potential husband should make you feel.’
Christos wasn’t sure he wanted to know this level of detail of his mother’s personal life but, in this scenario, he didn’t want to object and be left with her not opening up at all.
‘So, I said no to his proposal and I laughed and made a joke and he laughed too and it was all forgotten about… or so I thought.’ She took a sip of her drink.
‘Was that why Vaggelis was always around?’ Christos asked. ‘Because he loved you all that time?’
‘No,’ Angeliki said, confidently. And then, not so confidently, ‘I don’t know. But I do know he loved Andreas. Best friends are like brothers, they love each other, will do anything for each other, but I think Vaggelis sensed something in Andreas that he did not possess, this horrid desire to be on top, no matter what the situation. I do not think for a second that Vaggelis knew the truth of what was happening but I think he knew that his best friend could be firm in his ways. I think that was why he was around a lot. Just, keeping watch.’
‘Not to spend time with his son?’ Maria asked bluntly.
Angeliki shook her head, somewhat sadly this time and when her gaze landed, it landed on Christos. ‘Christo, Vaggelis never knew you were his son.’
He gritted his teeth together as that news landed and as his thoughts spiralled different parts of his brain tried to make sense of it. Was it better that Vaggelis hadn’t known? Was it worse? Had he suspected? Or not?
‘Angeliki, you never told him?’ Maria asked.
‘I never told anyone,’ Angeliki said. ‘It was one weekend. It was something so crazy I had never done before. Vaggelis said he wanted to go on an aeroplane. We had never been on a plane before, when we went with the school we went on a coach. That weekend Andreas was meant to come too but, when the morning arrived he had had too much to drink the night before and so it was just Vaggelis and I.’
Christos reached for his drink and tipped the entire contents down his throat.
‘We had so much fun,’ Angeliki continued. ‘Athens was beautiful, the weather was perfect and I remember feeling so peaceful, so free, so not trapped by Andreas.’ She swallowed. ‘We shared one night together and it was… the most wonderful night of my life.’
‘Oh, Angeliki,’ Maria said, sobbing.
‘But, you know, it was wrong and I was married to his best friend and we both agreed that we would never speak of it again. And we never did.’
‘But, when you found out you were pregnant, you still did not think you should speak about it then?’ Christos asked, bitterly.
‘Christo, please, put yourself in my shoes for a moment. Can you imagine what would have happened if I had. What your father… what Andreas would do? To know that I had betrayed him, with someone he treated like a brother…’ Angeliki gasped so hard the words seemed to choke in her throat, like she was right in the middle of what might have been.
‘And there was never one moment when you thought you should at least tell Vaggelis the truth?’ Christos asked.
‘One moment?’ Angeliki exclaimed. ‘There were hundreds of moments! When Andreas was yelling at you and telling you how worthless you were because you got something wrong at school. When Vaggelis was taking time teaching you how to cast a line to fish. When I looked across the table at family occasions and realised that all the traits Vaggelis had that I adored were things I should have taken much more notice of when I was younger.’
Christos pushed back his chair, getting up and putting his hands to the back of his head. This was so hard. Vaggelis was his father. Vaggelis never knew. And yet Vaggelis had known that Molly was his child and had done nothing about it except send money and write letters. Had he cared for Janette? Had he really cared for Angeliki? Perhaps the hardest thing was wondering if he had known Vaggelis’s character at all.
‘I do not know what to do,’ Christos blurted out. ‘Because I have built my life in Athens on the foundations of my loathing for a man who was not even my father. And my real father did not even know who I was to him. What do I do with that?’
‘I do not know,’ Angeliki said, shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, Christo.’
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘Because then there is the very worst thing… the one person that I have started to have true, deep feelings for, is now my half-sister!’
Angeliki burst into tears then and pain ripped through Christos’s gut. He looked to the dresser and there was that green-coloured snake dish that Vaggelis had gifted Magdalena. He wanted to smash it.
‘How did no one know?’ he asked his mother and Maria. ‘There were stacks of letters about Molly from her relative in Vaggelis’s photo album. Did no one really know anything about her existence?’
‘I did not, certainly,’ Maria stated.
‘Mama?’ Christos asked, looking at his mother.
Angeliki sniffed, pulled a tissue from the box on the table and wiped her eyes. ‘I knew that… Janetto was someone he liked more than he liked other tourist girls. And there were many tourist girls. Vaggelis had charm. Everybody liked him, you know that.’ She sniffed again. ‘But, Janetto, you know, she came back. With little Molly.’
‘And you didn’t think anything then?’
‘No, Christo. Because she came back once with the child, not twice or a dozen times, once. Why would I think that meant her daughter belonged to Vaggelis?’
He didn’t know. He was clutching at straws. He hated this scenario, hated it. There was no comfort to be had knowing the truth, only more difficulties because of long-ago lies.
And then all three of them suddenly jumped as a loud alert sounded in the room.
‘Was that my phone?’ Maria asked, plucking her handbag from the back of the dining room chair.
‘No, it was my phone,’ Angeliki said as she picked her phone up.
‘And mine,’ Christos said, pulling his from his pocket. He looked at the screen. ‘It is one of the government bad weather alerts. We are set to get a storm.’ He snorted. ‘As if we are not already in the middle of one.’