chapter 33
Decca
He was my husband. He might have belonged to the church, too, but he was mine. That’s why canon forced that order. So Father Constantinos would always be mine first. The church’s second.
Though while we were here, reluctantly, I had to share him.
He belonged to all of us. Like a pinball, he bounced from person to person and problem to problem. From the roof, to the stewardship database, to finding teachers for the Sunday school and Greek school and dance lessons.
“This is it.” Gus pointed to a solid maple industrial door with a vertical window above its handle. He looked behind him and pulled me in for a quick kiss. When he pulled away, he let out a low moan, his eyes darkening as he shook his head ever so slightly. He leaned in again, threading his hands into the back of my ponytail, kissing me harder. Opening his lips just enough for our breaths to pass between us, but still look innocent. As long as I ignored his hardening cock pressing into me.
“Father Gus?” asked a small voice. “Are you late?”
Gus smiled against my lips before pulling away. Shoving his hands into the slits of his robe and finding his trouser pockets underneath.
“Lucas. There you are!”
The boy scrunched his face. “It didn’t look like you were looking for me. I’ve been in the classroom the whole time.”
“Do you think you could show Presvytera Decca her seat?”
I looked sideways at Gus, but his attention was still on the kindergarten age boy in the doorway.
“Yeah!” Lucas turned to me. “We made you a name tag. It’s on your desk.” He widened the door for me, but I gave a pointed look back at Gus.
“I’ll be there in a minute. Try to keep them from drawing on the walls.” He winked and stalked off.
“Gus,” I called to him. “What am I doing here?”
“Greek school. You wanted to learn. The kids’ll help.”
A sound caught in my throat, but his long legs had already carried him halfway down the hall. His robes billowing after him made it almost look like he was gliding.
I loved watching my husband here. Maybe I hadn’t known what I was doing when I proposed, but the spirits must have known what I hadn’t. Something had arranged this. It was too perfect to have fallen into place by chance.
I ducked my head into the classroom. I wasn’t good with kids, unless you counted Sofia, but she’d never felt like a kid to me.
Lucas pointed me to my desk, which was just as small as the children’s, with a tented card that indeed read “Presvytera Decca.” When Gus had asked if I was busy, I hadn’t realized he wasn’t just being cute. He had actual plans for me.
To learn Greek. With the children of his parish. Our parish.
I had an important role in the church, and I’d done very little as presvytera so far. I’d been so busy when we’d first married, and it had kept me apart from his congregation.
After class, which was Greek level one and mostly ran through the Lord’s Prayer, there was a Christmas pageant rehearsal. The kids rehearsed, anyway. Luckily, Gus hadn’t written me into the play. I got to watch the Sunday school kids sing Jingle Bells and Silent Night, but also a few Greek carols I’d never have any hope of learning. The holidays still felt so far away, but after Halloween, the end of the year always sort of concertina-ed up on me.
My husband was in his element.
The pride shining in his eyes when the kids took their lines seriously. The way he joked around with the kids and their parents. The way they embraced him as a spiritual authority, even at such a young age.
It was hard to remember a time when I’d wanted anything else. The FAC Directorship was a pale comparison to this little, meaningful life I loved. I knew Jeanette was still waiting on a firm no, but if my mind hadn’t already been made up to decline the position, it certainly was now.
After arranging tables and cleaning for Sunday’s coffee hour, I stood in the back of the hall, ready to lend a hand if anyone needed.
Gus’s eyes drifted to me, again and again, during his conversations with various parishioners who’d been rushing around helping with last-minute decorations and food prep. He stole glances when he thought I wasn’t looking. But I always was. It didn’t matter his position in the church, or how many people were around. When our eyes met, there were fireworks.
He’s mine first.
Territorial pride wafted off me as I started to allow it to sink in.
The church’s second.
A hunched old woman in an apron and a hair net grabbed me by the neck, pulling me down, kissing my cheek with dry lips. “Yia-Yiá,” I said, happy to see a face that wasn’t giving me the máti. “Ti kánis?”
“Kalá, kalá. élla ethó.”Crooked, arthritic hands waved for me to follow her into the kitchens where other old women in black, and some younger women as well, were brushing butter over phyllo dough in giant pans. I’d been friends with Soula long enough to recognize the process of baklava-making when I saw it.
It was quieter in the kitchen, despite the roar of the restaurant-sized convection ovens. There were a few conversations going on, but without the kids’ sneakers squeaking across the linoleum tiles or shouts of forgotten lines, or old men arguing over how many chairs go around the tables, the kitchen was almost peaceful.
Someone handed me an apron, and I looped the soft, worn cotton around my neck. Back here, I was being given the evil eye, for sure. I’d never been introduced to them, but all the women knew who I was. Judging from their sour expressions and the casual way they switched from speaking English to Greek, none of them wanted me back here.
Either I was tampering with a well-worn system, and they knew I’d only be in the way, or they had something personally against me.
Yia-Yiá placed me in front of the layers of dough, gestured for me to handle this part. “One.” She held up her finger and pointed to the sheet of buttered pastry already lining the bottom of the pan.
I carefully lifted one thin sheet, draping the unwieldy dough in my hands until it clung to the butter-slicked sides of the pan. “Bravo, koukla.” She applauded my “skill” while she moved quickly to butter every inch. “Again,” she said.
We repeated the pattern over and over. Me, flicking through sheets of pastry, her telling me it was okay, okay whenever my fingers got too clumsy and I tore one in half, or a drop of butter prematurely glued two sheets together.
Working with phyllo was like making biscuits on a meta level. Instead of grating in the butter and fluffing it into the flour with a dough fork, it was like a microscope had zoomed in as we perfectly placed the fat between layers with the utmost intention.
After fifteen layers of butter and pastry, my mouth watered. Other women had already placed their baklava pans into the ovens, and the fragrance was blossoming. Nutty, buttery bliss floated through the air, warmed with winter spices.
I closed my eyes and when I opened them, several of the women were frowning in my direction.
Yia-Yiá stilled my hands as she gestured to a beat-up silver bowl next to me. “Next you put the nuts.”
“All of them.”
“No. I say when.”
Granny was the same. Never measured. Never even had a clue what a cup of something would’ve looked like. “What’s in this?” I sprinkled the nut mixture over the bottom layers of the baklava.
“Eh, walnut, sugar, garífallo. Pós les garífallo?” She asked the woman across from us.
“Cloves,” the woman spat.
Another quiet chorus of Greek erupted around the room, the women careful not to make eye contact with me.
I ignored them to focus on my task. I was hard pressed and determined to do good work. To make Yia-Yiá tell me bravo again, even though I wasn’t doing anything very difficult. To call me whatever word she’d called me, assuming it was an endearment. It’d been so long since I’d worked together in a kitchen with family, I wasn’t going to let a bunch of salty women rob me of this moment.
Yia-Yiá and I finished the other million layers of dough, and butter, and nuts. Then she slapped a dull-looking knife down on the stainless-steel work surface.
“You cut,” she said.
I nodded as she demonstrated the diamond pattern she wanted me to follow. It took a while to get the hang of cutting through the different layers and textures, the soft strata of pastry, the knife-halting walnut chucks that wanted to rip through the pretty top film, but in the end, my lines were surgically straight.
Even the woman eyeing my work across the table shrugged her shoulder, gesturing to the woman next to her.
“What about the honey?” I asked. I’d never made baklava, but I’d eaten plenty enough to know the small amount of sugar we’d put between the layers of pastry wouldn’t be enough to create that glorious eruption of sweetness in every bite.
“After we bake, we put the honey.”
I placed it in the oven.
“Twenty minutes, then we check the color.”
“Baking by color. That’s how my granny did it, too.”
“You’re not Greek.” The woman across from me accused, with narrowed eyes. “You don’t do your cross in church. Where is your family from?” Her accent was decidedly less pronounced than Yia-Yiá‘s, but she was still what Gus called Greeky Greek, as in from Greece.
“I’m from East Tennessee. The mountains. A ridge so small it’s not even a town. But my granny moved us here when I was seven, after my mom died.”
“Na zisete na ti thimáste,”she said. “May her memory be eternal.”
“Zoe se isas,”said another.
“Life to you,” Yia-Yiá translated, patting my hand.
“Your husband’s Yia-Yiá is from the mountains. From Críti... Crete,” she said like an American. “Very beautiful. Different from here.”
“Yes, during undergrad, I did a semester on an archeological dig at the Palace of Knossos. Birthplace of the Minoan Civilization.”
“Ah, you’ve been to Greece. You speak Greek? I don’t think so. No?”
“No. Your secrets are safe with one another.”
She smiled.
“Your name’s Theka,“ she said it like a Greek word. “Means ten. The number ten. In Greek,” said the woman across. “Almost sounds Greek. You almost look Greek.”
“I’m from Appalachia. Melungeon heritage. A mix of everything.”
“Your father?”
“I never knew him.”
“Mmm,” the woman said, appraising. “I’m Kyriaki.”
“Keedi—”
“Kiki,” she offered, stressing the last syllable. Not like the anime witch. “Chrysanthi, in pink. And Angie and Anna are washing the pans. We come here to bake for festivals and bake sales. You come too, now. You’re presvytera. We’ll teach you.”
“Of course.”
“Dec, you in here?” Gus swung into the kitchen. “Ah. Kiki, ti yinete?”
She answered in Greek and his eyes flashed to me mid-sentence. He was nodding.
“Polí kalla. Hi, Yia-Yiá,“ he hugged his grandmother. “How are you?”
I smiled as I watched him. He always tried to shift the conversation into English to include me. He did it with his grandparents and mom and the parishioners. It was a little indication that he didn’t want to leave me out, and it always made my heart swell. At home, he was a different person. Sometimes I forgot he was Greek. I didn’t think of him as a priest, rarely noticed the collar anymore. He was just Gus.
But I loved these little glimpses into this other side of him. The side he never forgot because he was born to do it. And it was really hot watching him speak Greek. Especially when I knew the conversation was about me and I got to be a fly on the wall and watch him squirm and blush and keep his composure as their spiritual father. Yia-Yiá said something while patting his chin that made his cheeks glow.
“Ne, ne, efharistó, Yia-Yiá.”
Yes, yes, thank you. I knew that much.
“Are you ready?”
“No.” I smiled.
“What are we waiting on?” He hopped up on one of the countertops and plucked out a large chunk of walnut from the mixture, popping it into his mouth. I rarely saw him so at ease. So playful. He felt safe here, in his community. At church. Even the classrooms and the hall were special to him.
“I’ve got baklava in the oven, and I need to put the syrup as soon as it comes out.“ I shrugged, pointing to his grandmother, who was gabbing with her friends.
He bent forward, hooked a finger in the waistband of my skirt, and dragged me closer to him. His breath tickled my ear as he spoke, but he kept his hands to himself. “She speaks English just fine, you know. Don’t let her trick you.”
“I think it’s sweet. I don’t mind a little immersive language learning.”
“She’s going to turn you into her familiar spirit if you’re not careful. Make you drive her to the grocery store and take her to all her doctor’s appointments.”
“The grocery store I can do. I’m usually working during doctor’s hours.”
He glanced up briefly. The old ladies seemed to be in the middle of an argument and not paying much attention to us. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and held his hand on my neck too long for a priest to do in front of his congregation. Married or not.
I stepped away. Smiling, but shaking my head. “You might not think they’re watching us, and they might not be watching you. But they’re watching me, and I intend to be a good presvytera.”
“How good?” His eyes glittered.
I bit my lip and glanced at his lap. “How well does that rasson hide your cock when it gets hard?”
He hopped off the counter and stood straight, only lowering his head to whisper into my ear.
“Crow, I’m always hard when you’re around. The fact you’ve never noticed should answer that question.”
He swept behind me, gripping my hip and pulling it against him firmly enough for me to feel his erection, but quickly enough no one would’ve noticed.
“Enjoy your honey.”