The Clover House by Henriette Lazaridis Power Page A

dinner at which she brought him everything, getting up several times during the meal to fetch him things he could have reached himself. I think of Jonah getting groceries on that frigid day when Aliki called about Nestor. Aliki and my mother would be shocked.
    The
karythopita
is good, a winter dessert I have had only the few times when my mother’s nostalgia spurred her to make it. I used to think her fits of baking were meant to include me, to share with me the world she valued so much. But I learned soon enough that I did not figure in my mother’s nostalgic re-creations. And her version of the walnut cake was so over-drenched in syrup that its sweetness made me ill. Even my mother must have felt sick after eating it and must have realized that it bore no resemblance to the
karythopita
her mother had made for her long ago. Aliki’s cake is light and nutty, and the syrup tracks over it in fragrant loops.
    After dessert but before the guests start to leave, Aliki shows me my bed in the spare room and sets out towels for me.
    “I’m sorry about all those questions at dinner,” she says.
    “It’s not your fault. They weren’t trying to be mean,” I say.
    “No, they were just being Greek. They can’t stay out of other people’s business. But still.”
    She pulls a blanket from a high cupboard and hands it to me.
    “Do you want to call Clio?” she says. “Let her know you’re here?”
    “Not now,” I say, knowing my mother will be angry that I am waiting a day. But I am tired and don’t want to face her now.
    “Anyone else you want to call instead?” She is fishing.
    “Not right now,” I say, smiling.
    “What happened to the one who came here with you that time, before we moved into this place?”
    “Luke.” He read
Zorba the Greek
before the trip; by the end of two weeks, he was greeting people and ordering meals with a decent accent.
    “I remember he changed Demetra’s diaper for me.” She shakes her head in amazement.
    “It didn’t work out.”
    Luke was more in love with Greece than with me.
    “I’m sorry Nikos brought up the whole thing about when you left so suddenly. I’ve never told him what happened.”
    “It’s all right.”
    After Luke there was Sam. Sam led to Pete, who seemed nicer than he was. Each of these relationships was shorter than the one before. But Sam was the one I thought might stick for a little longer. We had rented a tiny house on the island of Zakynthos, where we were going to try out being serious about each other. But days before we were to leave Boston, I broke things off. For some reason, I stopped in Patras at my mother’s before heading to Zakynthos alone. I should have known that no conversation with my mother could have gone well, but I had no idea how spectacularly badly it would actually turn out. I never got to Aliki’s at all and reached Zakynthos in a state of suspended fury, still shaking from the accusations and insults my mother had aimed at me so expertly. The island’s earthquake-blasted landscape seemed just right for my hollowed-out state.
    Fatigue must be letting my emotions show, for Aliki touches my arm.
    “I’m sorry, Calliope.”
    “It’s all right.”
    The guest room is a small, tidy space between Demetra’s room and her parents’ bedroom. The bed is narrow but fine forone, and there is a good light on the low table that serves as a nightstand. I dig through my bag for my T-shirt and bottoms and take my turn in the bathroom to brush my teeth. The layout is just as I remember it—like a galley version of a bathroom—but Thalia’s chrome and porcelain fixtures are all gone. In their place are what look like sculptural artifacts. It takes me nearly a minute to figure out how to run the water. It seems out of character for both Aliki and Nikos, but I remind myself that I really don’t know Nikos very well.
    As I lie in the narrow bed in the dark, I can hear Aliki talking to Demetra in the next room. She is tucking her in, and her