Let Me Explain You Page 3

  Mr. Asbury’s lips puckered into an asterisk. No, a whisk. “I don’t understand, Stevie.”

  She did not answer. Which between them meant, Yes, you do.

  It was Marina who had taught Stavroula about naming dishes—how it was like slipping a key into a lock: most fit, but only the right one could make the door swing open and the eater enter. It was Marina who had taught Stavroula to take herself seriously—what she wanted, what she needed to be. You can be a vessel, koukla—she had taught her years ago—as long as you know what you’re meant to carry.

  Mr. Asbury was hesitant, kind, when he chuckled. Telling Stavroula what she already knew without saying it: she was intense. So what. How did he think her food got its flavor? A few months ago when he slipped a little extra pocket money into her apron for her birthday, what had she bought? Japanese salt, one of only thirty-two batches. And did she take it home? No, she used it in his pots.

  “Stevie, you’re asking me to name food after my daughter?”

  “I’m not asking you to name anything, John.”

  She was doing the naming here. And she did not want to name food after July: she wanted to name her every creation, from now through summer, after July. Maybe into winter. What women want, more than anything, is honest and intent flattery, which means if you want to pursue a woman you have to show her you know her, see her, nothing less. No, that wasn’t it. You have to prove that you will try over and over to know her. Understand this: at any time a woman’s appetite can change. Maybe she’s hungry for more, maybe she’s had enough. A woman, like a meal, is a complex, evolving creation.

  In the chaos of the kitchen, filling orders, Stavroula showed him a mousseline, a delicate savory composite of pureed shrimp and cream that enhanced the briny sweetness and plump bite of crabmeat. She removed the crabmeat from the bowl of chilled milk, the ice machine still going, but she didn’t hear it anymore. She blitzed six ounces of shrimp, plus cream and Old Bay, some Dijon, hot sauce, fresh lemon. Pureeing the shrimp releases sticky proteins that delicately hold the clumpy pieces of crabmeat together, she told him. Coat in toasted panko, cook patties until golden brown.

  “No egg? No filler?” He smiled. “What, we’re too sophisticated for that now?”

  “There’s nothing filler about your daughter.”

  Only the sous-chef raised his eyes at this. She didn’t care, and the rest of them were intimidated by her, they wouldn’t dare look. Mr. Asbury blinked several times until he settled on, “I agree.” But it was clear he was not agreeing with her. Enough: she would make him eat. Stavroula plated the crab cakes and squirted an accompanying swirl of wasabi-avocado sauce. She used her fingers to confirm what she already knew. Perfect. Maybe some lemon peel. She added a little salt for crunch and also because salt, in Greek folklore, got rid of unwanted guests. Such as her father.

  If it were her father she needed to convince, it would have translated into This door is locked and so is the window. But with Mr. Asbury, it was more like a fence she could hop over. There were footholds, if you trusted your weight to it. She imagined herself trying to explain to her father who July was, what she deserved. He would turn around and tell her what she deserved. He would say she was doing this to spite him, and in this instance he would be right. Let me explain you something, she would answer back. It was time for her to be who she was on the outside so she could be who she was supposed to be on the inside. It had only taken thirty-one years.

  Mr. Asbury broke into the glossy crab cake with his fork. His expression was softening, like meat defrosting. Cooking with someone, you got to learn how they think. What he thought was, the menu would sell. Still—“You want my approval on this?”

  “Not approval.” She made herself—made herself—look at him. Ice and everything. Email, everything. “Your blessing.”

  Mr. Asbury was first to break away. He tried, quietly, “What about flowers? Her mother always liked yellow tulips.”

  “I’m not good at flowers, John.”

  In her life he was the one person who had ever gotten her flowers, roses after she landed him a solid review in The Philadelphia Inquirer, and they lasted ten minutes in the vase. Moments later, she was boiling them down to rosewater. She did not try to reassure him that she had been grateful; he saw it in the rosewater pudding she made exclusively for him, after-hours.

  Mr. Asbury didn’t know how to handle this kind of demand about his own daughter. Or from a woman. He was trying to protect July, but also Stavroula. They had never spoken it aloud, but Stavroula knew that Mr. Asbury must suspect her feelings. She remembered the first time she caught him catching her, though he may have seen it even sooner than that. July had come in to post the new weekly schedule. She addressed the evening’s waitstaff in a long black skirt, which exposed her calf, the most Stavroula had ever seen of July, not counting her bare, long, thin arms. The rest of her calf, Stavroula could imagine: white as batter. That was when Stavroula felt Mr. Asbury’s eyes on her. She double-checked. Had they taken actual inventory? They had. Did he know? Yes. Stavroula went directly to the ice machine and plunged her hand in. It drained the pink from her face and soon enough her fingers took on the texture of rubbery poultry.

  Mr. Asbury had picked up the menu and was rubbing it between two fingers as if it were oregano.

  “Stevie, nobody does this. Nobody wants it done to them.”

  “Maybe they do,” she said, drawing back. Then, because it was him, she admitted, “I don’t know how to give less.”

  July at breakfast, July at lunch. July half-price appetizers with a summer ale, when everyone feels relief that the hard hours of the day are done and looks forward to the final amber hours of the evening with gratitude and ease. The waiters would relay to the kitchen: July. Their order slips would be filled with July. Trash cans would be filthy with July, stomachs full of July. When the order was up, Stavroula’s assistants would ring a bell and their sentences would all start with July. Stavroula’s entire world would be July, as it was already, in a way. July would walk into July and feel—stunned, flattered, maybe desire the size of a pea. Which is all that Stavroula needed.

  “If I say no, that means you’ll walk?”

  “Do you want to say no?”

  Mr. Asbury adjusted himself on the stool. “She’ll think this is my idea.”

  “You can tell her it isn’t.”

  “You ought to tell her it isn’t.”

  Stavroula bunched up the side of her apron. “You’re right. I’ll explain it to her.”

  The email—that was the thing pushing her, from its place in her white apron that had only ever seen utensils. The letter was this one small thing that can change everything. It was this Let me explain you something that had been explaining to her, all night, what she needed to do. It had appeared in her in-box some time around midnight, addressed to all of the women in her family, and each time she read it she told herself it would be the last time. At four, she left her bed and her bull terrier, Dumpling. The blankets were a scramble. She started to email him a response. Instead, she rewrote her entire menu.

  Fuck her hair.

  DAY 8

  * * *

  Denial

  God has to exist, because He is the only one who can do for You.

  We cannot do for You.

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  The alarm registered in razor-green flashes, one grinding wail blaring into the next, like spreadsheets opening within spreadsheets opening within spreadsheets, all of them inventorying her faults in a code that everyone tried to read but no one but her actually could. 10:31, she was officially thirty-one minutes late for work. 10:43, Litza answered Rob’s call. Of course it was him, who else was looking for her on a Sunday morning? Not her ex-husband—and not her friends, who were too fucked up for her these days, or too stuck on rehab repeat.

  Could Rob blame her for sleeping in? No one should have to work insurance on Sundays in an office located on a street called Industrial Complex Row, b
ut Litza herself had elected to work Sundays so that a) she could work from home three other days a week; b) none of the supervisors would be there to correct her when what she was doing was right to begin with; c) how would they know if she was doing it wrong, anyway? d) none of the cunts she worked with would be in to outpace her; e) Sunday was the Lord’s day to do with what she wanted; f) Sunday was actually an ambitious track for someone in her field, this was a way to get promoted, fuck her father that he thought she had no ambition; and g) Rob was fun. But this Sunday there were already a hundred E-100s to sort—all the leftover ones from the morning she and Rob went for pancakes.

  What she could not handle today was mass denials.

  Rob wanted to know, “Yo, you want to come grace us with your unhealthy presence?”

  She could have reached the clock to turn off the alarm but didn’t. She said, “I’m not asking for that much, Robby. Just the pending sterilizations.”

  The pending sterilizations he could do in his sleep, just like her, he joked. That wasn’t the issue, the pendings. The issue was it was a gorgeous Sunday. He had made them eggplant parmesan. Well, bought it from Carmen’s. She should come in, they’d kill the pendings and walk to the park for lunch. Yo, it was a beautiful day. The swans might be at the lake.

  It was almost enough—this surprise of lunch, a promise of swans. It was his wanting that she wanted, the hard work of a nineteen-year-old eager for a woman in her late twenties to notice him, which made her, she realized, not all that different from her father. How could she ever take seriously a man—OK, kid—who wanted only to please her? She said, “You just have to run them as a batch appeal. It’s quick.” Knowing he’d cave.

  She should have been promoted already, a jump from pay scale 4 to pay scale 6, whatever that was supposed to mean. Every job gave you aggravation, but at least here she didn’t have to be nice and pray that her niceness would get her somewhere. Here, it was brains and quotas, except that, before too long, here was just like everywhere else and they held off on the promotion when the cunts reported Litza talking on her cell during work hours. Thereafter she had to watch her back, that was the moral of the workplace, any workplace. Rob she could trust, because Rob she knew how to handle. But the cunts, they were the type to complain to the supervisors about how she spoke to customers and how she needed to ask colleagues for things differently, when Litza didn’t understand why the question had to be different if the answer was going to be the same regardless. She could say, “Is it pharma 636, cunt?” or she could say, “Is it pharma 636?” and the cunt would have to confirm it was or it was not 636. The dumbest people surrounding her, exactly like the ones who stood up at graduation to interrupt the dean, who was handing out associate’s degrees. Litza had been the only one listening to the dean’s remarks, she had been paying attention about how to get ahead, because she was smart. Her father couldn’t see this. Her father had refused to come.

  Watch your back was the moral of family, too, of course, but that she learned early.

  “I’m going through some family shit right now, Robby.” He wasn’t mad—if there was one thing he respected, it was being there for your family. He did whine like a baby for another minute, though. She promised that she’d be able to cover for him when his boys came into town, but knew she wouldn’t have to because he wouldn’t ask.

  She went back to sleep. The second time she woke, it was to push the alarm off its shelf. The third time, it was voice mail pinging at her ear. She sat up to listen: Litza, ah, you and I have some things. To talk on together. Pause, laugh. Are you not answering because you have my email letter there in front of you? Pause. I know I have forbid you from the diner, but it is OK now that you come when there is not too much time.

  She should send him a letter of her own final wishes. Dear Dad: Let me explain you. Don’t write me letters, don’t leave any more fucking messages.

  But that was not her actual final wish. Her actual final wish would have nothing to do with her father.

  A baby.

  Even if all she had left to spend with it was ten days. Or one day. That would be enough for her, God. If He—obviously He—were listening. One day is too much to ask? God?

  She brushed her teeth. She applied makeup that she did not need. Her unblemished skin made her appear tender, which was sometimes true. Her eyes were smoky brown with flecks of blue—where did those come from? No one in her family had eyes like hers. Often, when she got what she wanted, it was because of those eyes, large and intense and giving the unlikely impression that she was interested in what was spilling out of your mouth. Her hair was smoky, too, her hair was also her own; it surprised even Litza that her hair was not dark like Stavroula’s. But, whatever, she was skinny, and her boobs were perky, undeniably Greek. They were the reason every boy she’d ever been with called her his Greek Goddess, and she never confessed that the nickname had been used up already. She threw on a zebra-print shirt, slipped into some heels, added silver hyperbola earrings. The earrings, she had made herself.

  One occasion—her wedding—Litza made jewelry for all of the women in her family. Now Litza made jewelry exclusively for strangers, people who, after visiting her online store, thought her an artist. Her family did not know the store existed—did not know she was an artist. At the moment she was into cement, had designed a pair of teardrop earrings that, truthfully, she could see on Stavroula. Before cement, there had been the copper phase, and before that, sterling silver. She liked working at 750-degree temperatures, did not yet trust herself with gold. Her jewelry was simple, modern, surprisingly the least complicated thing in her life and in no way representative of the jumble in her head. If she tried to go ornate, the piece said enough, and demanded she loosen up, and she got out of the way. That was why people were willing to sometimes pay for her hobby. Over the last few years, it was this hobby that brought Litza praise—some almost inexplicably generous. Many nights those online reviews were what got her to sleep, and then what got her to wake up two hours before work so she could heat up the soldering iron and discover what shape the next piece would take. The side money she was earning was almost enough to book a flight to Greece, finally give her a break from every fucking thing and person bringing stress into her life.

  Litza opened the minifridge. The full-sized fridge had overheated or whatever coils did when they sizzled then crackled to death, and the landlord had posted a note to her door, Fridge’s luxury not necessity, see lease, but you can borrow this for now, and replaced the refrigerator with what might as well have been a cooler. You could keep eggs, butter, orange juice in it, some leftovers, vegetables, or you could keep, as she did, one bottle of soda and a tray of mealy pasta. She went to the diner.

  Her father owned two diners, but she knew which one he meant. Her family always went to the Gala I; it was their second home. She hadn’t been to the other diner in years—some unlucky subordinate ran the Gala II and reported back to her father. The Gala I was the only thing going on in town, other than Diamond Lady, the purple warehouse strip joint so infamous that it had been on daytime talk shows. When they were teenagers Litza’s friends had filled out applications to work at Diamond Lady, but Litza had refused to set foot inside even as a joke.

  Her drive to the diner took only seven minutes because she lived in the same shitty town. She got out of the car and flicked her cigarette, half-smoked. She winced at the glare from the diner, proudly covered in stainless steel. Her father liked to brag how, of the six hundred diners founded by Greeks from Philadelphia to New York between 1950 and 1983, the Gala I was the best.

  The hostess kept her eyes away from Litza’s face like she didn’t want any trouble, and Litza kept staring her down simultaneously like a) You’re not worth any trouble and b) If I want to, I will, even though the girl looked perfectly sweet. Litza slunk into the same booth where, as children, she and Stavroula talked about eating so much candy that they would be able to replace their teeth with gold ones; Litza had snuck to the front and
stolen the metal dish of dinner mints from the cashier, and they packed them into their mouths like extra teeth. No one in America had so many gold teeth as they were planning, until Stavroula gave in to something that Litza did not feel and brought the mints back.

  Litza swallowed a half-mg of Xanax dry. The diner was shiny and right. Mirrors all over the place. And, for some reason, a statue of a Greek goat god, which had been here her entire life. The dessert case next to the hostess station was a temple; the glass was clean, not in shards as it was the last time when, as her father noted in his letter, she smashed it with a stool. Cakes were whole, not all over the floor, and Stavros was not instantly on his knees to gather the mess away from the eyes of the customers. That was the image of her father she would take to her grave, him on his knees sweeping all of the wet crumbs toward him, icing clinging to his bare forearms like Spackle. She would die with that vision of him, she was sure of it. What is the point, Dad, of gathering what’s ruined?

  He knew she was here. He could come to her.

  She flipped through the menu so that she did not have to meet anyone’s eye. It had gotten longer since she last looked. The menu promised, We never close, New Jersey! (Or, New York, or—anywhere you are Coming from!) Always, we are here for you, Twenty-four/Seven. Just like home. Then, page after page of diner items like pork roll, egg & cheese. Halfway through the menu, two full pages of welcome; in paragraph form, her father explained his philosophy behind every dish and its connection to the homeland. We Eat a Little, We have some Wine (BYOB), We thank the Cook. Sincerely, Your Greek Family.