My Brother Left Me With the Man He Told Me to Stay Away From, and Then Didn't Come Back novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Sunday Table
At the kafeneio's Sunday table, Spiros asks whether her brother kept up his visits to the bank and puts a hand on her arm; Laz removes it by the wrist.
The kafeneio on Dodecanese Boulevard had been run by the same family for sixty years, and for sixty years the long table in the back had belonged to the Stavrakis name.
Sunday supper was there once a month, with the whole family and the men who owed it something.
Despina brought me.
She walked in ahead of me in her black dress with a covered dish in both hands, and the room stood up when she came.
Then it saw Laz behind me, and it went quieter.
Twenty-six people sat along the table.
There was a pitcher of retsina at every elbow and a plate of olives going around.
On the wall behind the head chair hung a photograph of Laz's father, Aristides, in a diver's collar, squinting into some sun that had set thirty years ago.
The man sitting beneath it did not look like him at all.
"The Kallias girl," he said, and he spread his arms.
Spiros Stavrakis was sixty-one and heavy in the way of a man who had eaten well for decades and never lifted anything.
His silver hair was combed back from his forehead, and he wore a gold ring on each hand and a white linen shirt open at the collar.
He was smiling.
It went on for a long time and it did not move up past his cheeks.
"Come," he said.
"Sit by me, sit by me.
"Your mother's daughter.
"We were all so sorry."
It had been four years.
He had not come to the funeral.
I sat where Despina steered me, which was three seats down from the head and across from Laz.
Spiros turned his whole chair toward me anyway.
He poured my wine himself.
"A dental hygienist," he said.
"That's honest work.
"Cleaning mouths.
"You'd be surprised what a mouth knows."
Someone down the table laughed at it, a beat late.
"And how is your brother?" Spiros went on.
"He's well," I said.
"He's on a ship, they tell me."
"A contract," I said.
"Of course," Spiros said.
"A boy like Nikos, he likes to be useful.
"Keeps busy."
He sipped his retsina and set the glass down very precisely in its ring.
"Tell me," he said.
"Did he keep up his Sunday visits to the bank?"
I looked at him.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
I felt Laz across from me go perfectly still, the way a dog goes still in a field when it hears something.
"I wouldn't know," I said.
"Nikos doesn't tell me about the bank."
"No?
"A brother who tells his sister nothing.
"That's unusual in a family like ours."
"My brother's business is his business," I said.
"Is it?"
Spiros smiled wider.
"He kept the books for this family for seven years, my dear.
"That makes it my business too."
He reached across the corner of the table and laid his hand on my forearm.
It was warm and damp, with a ring pressing into my skin.
His thumb moved on the inside of my wrist.
I did not move.
I had been taught at this table that you do not make a scene in front of the old men.
I looked at the ring and I thought about what my mother would have said.
Then Laz put down his fork.
It made a small clean sound on the plate.
He had not stood up and he had not raised his voice.
He reached across the table with his long hand and closed it around his uncle's wrist, just above the gold watch.
He lifted it off my arm.
He set it down on the tablecloth by Spiros's own glass.
"She's eating," Laz said.
The table was silent.
Twenty-six people, and not one fork moved.
Spiros looked at the hand on his wrist.
He looked at his nephew's face.
For one moment the smile slipped, and what lay underneath it was old and very still.
"Of course," Spiros said softly.
"Forgive me.
"I'm an affectionate man."
"I know what you are," Laz said.
He let go.
He picked up his fork again and went on eating, and the room started breathing.
Someone asked for the bread.
A child at the far end of the table dropped a spoon and was shushed.
Despina, at the other end, was ladling something into a bowl.
She did not look up, but I saw her mouth go flat.
I did not eat much after that.
The rest of the evening went by in a blur of toasts and handshakes.
Men came up to tell me what a good man my father had been.
I smiled at all of them and kept my hands in my lap.
At nine Laz stood and said it was time to go, and nobody argued.
In the Suburban, I sat in the back seat with my tote on my knees.
The driver, one of the men from my driveway, looked straight ahead.
Laz sat beside me with his arm along the seat, not touching me.
We were passing the sponge docks.
The boats were lit up in a long line at their moorings, and the water was black and shining.
"You will not be alone with my uncle," he said.
"Not for one minute.
"Not at the table, not on the street, not if he calls and says he has something for you."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I asked you," he said.
"That's not a reason."
"It's the only one I'm giving you tonight," he said.
I turned my head and looked at him.
His profile was cut against the lit boats, and the scar through his eyebrow showed pale.
"He asked me about the bank," I said.
"Yes," Laz said.
"I don't know anything about a bank."
"I know," he said.
"You said that fast."
He did not answer.
I said his name again, and he turned his head.
"Then tell me why," I said.
"Tell me why a man at your table asks me about my brother's Sundays and your face looks like that."
The Suburban turned onto Tarpon Avenue.
The streetlights went across his face one at a time, and none of them told me anything.
"Not tonight," he said.
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