Page 12 of The Summer Show
I adored Lina. She was warm and charming, and she had never once tried to burn my books or suck me into a cult. With Ana living in Greece now, every so often Lina and I did coffee or lunch to catch up.
Ana’s grandmother and great-grandmother were, as far as I could tell, slightly unhinged in a way that made them lovable yet unpredictable. Ana’s grandmother—Yiayia—spoke enough English to be dangerous, and she was using her skills to entertain herself.
The two elder Stamou women lived together in a charming stucco cottage with a yard overflowing with potted plants. Really, it was a pollinator’s paradise. Directly next door was the Roussos house, where Thanos’s great-grandmother and grandfathered lived. For a hundred years these two houses were ground zero for the war between their families. Now there was peace … and a gate in the cinderblock wall, because Ana’s grandmother and Thanos’s grandfather were newlyweds.
We were all sitting under a vine smothered pergola, sipping frappes and eating preserved cherries, watching the world walk past their narrow street. Every few minutes, someone stopped to gawk at me. I smiled, waved, and hoped I wasn’t bringing shame upon this house.
“Somebody is drawing penises in my library books,” I said, repeating myself.
Both women threw up their hands and cackled.
I should tell you right now that Ana’s great-grandmother spoke ten words of English, and about two of them were clean. Those two words were also foods.
The gate in the wall opened. An ancient relic wrapped in black cloth stumped into the yard, leaning on a walking stick. She fired a stream of Greek words at Ana’s grandmother—Yiayia. Then she grunted when Yiayia replied.
The relic clicked her fingers. “Chair.” Her accent was thick, practically chunky. Her black eyes bored into me like I was responsible for the furniture. I didn’t have to be clicked at twice. Like I’d been bitten by a fire ant, I leaped up and shoved my chair under her backside so she could sit.
“Devil,” Proyiayia—Ana’s Great-grandmother told me. “We pray, we spit, nothing. She is big bit—”
“Thanos’s great-grandmother,” Ana told me quickly before Proyiayia could finish that sentence. My takeaway was that Proyayia’s English vocabulary was more robust than Ana realized. Maybe she’d been taking Duolingo lessons.
“Tell her your poutsa story!” Yiayia said, stabbing her needlepoint canvas with an excess of enthusiasm.
It wasn’t exactly my penis story, but okay. “Somebody is drawing penises in my library’s books,” I said. Ana gave me another chair. I gingerly sat.
“Mime it for her,” Yiayia said, egging me on. “Do the charades.”
Thanos’s great-grandmother stared at me as I skittered dangerously close to interpretive dance in my attempt to accurately depict the defacing of Dog Man.
After a few moments of silence, I was sure she was going to crush me with the weight of her gaze. My head would cave in like soft, rotting fruit. Had she understood a word of what I said?
Then her mouth curved up and open, in slow motion. The woman was tiny, but she was hiding a gaggle of geese in her throat. She made a sound like a goose army on its way to attack the UPS guy for having the audacity to deliver a package.
It took me some time to realize she was laughing.
“There has to be a way to solve this,” Ana said. “I know we can rule out this year’s kindergarten kids. And if there aren’t any new ones this coming school year, you know it was a fifth grader.”
I shoveled more cherries into my mouth before answering. “I don’t care about the genitalia. I’m more worried that a child with massive artistic potential is going undiscovered. They need encouragement, resources, other things to draw. Some nice cheese and bread. Maybe a pizza. Still life with delicious foods.”
“Cheese and bread is pretty wholesome,” Ana said.
“See? Whoever this student is, they need more cheese and bread in their art supplies.”
There was a quick skirmish when Lina attempted to go back for more coffee and her mother shoved her back into her chair before bolting for the kitchen. Hospitality was serious business around here. Or kitchens were.
Lina checked her arms for mother-inflicted bruises. “Did Nick show up at your place?” she asked her daughter.
“Yeah, but he can’t stay there.” With a tired sigh, Ana blew an upward breeze. When that didn’t cool her off, she shook the neckline of her dress. “What’s going on with him?”
Lina’s forehead creased. “I think his breakup with that woman.”
Her answer didn’t sit right with Ana, who was positively glowering at the mention of that woman, who I assumed was the infamous Taylor. With minimal overlap, Taylor managed to be engaged to Thanos and Nick.
“That was ages ago,” Ana said.
“Maybe it took this long for him to realize it’s really over,” I said.
Ana still wasn’t buying it. “It’s something else. He’s Mr. Monosyllable lately.”