Chapter 5: Halsted Street

I had put the ring on the string with the key.

It hung against my breastbone under my sweater beside the brass drawer key, and I felt both of them every time I breathed.

Eleni had said I could visit my family for Sunday lunch, once, with a driver.

The driver was Nikos.

He opened the rear door of the black Lincoln and stood with his eyes lowered while I got in.

He did not say a word the whole way down the Kennedy.

I sat in the back with my hands in my lap and watched the back of his neck.

Halsted Street was gray and salted and half empty.

The awnings of the Greektown bakeries were stiff with frost.

The Vrettos taverna sat between a dentist and a shuttered shoe store, with its blue sign cracked down the middle.

I had been born in the flat upstairs.

Aris was waiting at the back door in his white apron.

He was twenty-seven and wiry, with black curls going every direction.

When he saw me he opened his arms and then stopped, because I was not alone.

Nikos had stopped the car at the curb.

My brother looked at the Lincoln, and at the man behind the wheel.

Nothing happened to his face.

It was the stillness that told me everything.

"Go in," Nikos said to me quietly through the open window.

"I'll wait out here."

"Wait wherever you like."

I went inside to my brother and did not look back.

We made the dough for the tsoureki without talking.

I had wanted to do something with my hands, and he had wanted to give them to me.

I put the flour on the steel and cracked in the eggs.

The mastic and mahleb scented the air, and the old oven ticked behind us.

Aris stood across from me and worked the butter in.

His hands moved slowly, the left one never closing all the way.

I watched the knuckles, bent and thick, and I felt the shape of the cash drawer against my spine.

"You look thin," he said.

"I'm fine," I said.

"You're lying," he said.

"You have Mama's mouth when you lie."

"Aris," I said.

"Is he good to you?"

I did not answer.

I did not know which man he meant.

Our father came in at one, wiping his palms on his apron, red in the face from the card room.