The Clover House by Henriette Lazaridis Power Page B

voice is soft and low. The little girl’s voice slides into and out of a loud whisper as she tells her mother about her day.
    I try to sleep, listening to the sounds of Aliki putting Demetra to bed, padding around and turning off lights, Nikos flushing the toilet, kicking his slippers onto the floor. But my body thinks it is late afternoon and, after what seems like hours, I give in and get out of bed. The apartment is chilly from the damp air that comes off the Gulf of Patras, so I pull on a sweater over my T-shirt and slip out into the hall. I walk around the living room and the dining room, peering at photographs in the orange glow from the balcony windows. There are photos from Aliki and Nikos’s wedding, the two of them with flower crowns on their heads connected by a white ribbon. They are smiling, and in the background, out of the flashbulb’s glare, you can see guests laughing as if at an inside joke. There are photos of Demetra in various school and church celebrations: her baptism, Easter, a Greek Independence Day parade in which she and her classmates all wear their blue uniforms and carry little Greek flags. Here are Demetra, Aliki, and Nikos in bathing suits on a pebble beach; here they are sitting around a Christmas tree with my aunts Thalia and Sophia. And with mymother. The sight of her there in a Christmas photograph—in someone else’s Christmas—shoots a pang of jealousy through me. Alone in the dark room, I shake my head, chiding myself for this slip into sentiment.
    I remind myself that tomorrow I will have to speak with her—that I will have to see her in person and, more important, that she will have to see me. She will, no doubt, find me inadequate in some way. And even at thirty-five, I am still worried by this possibility, this inevitability. Never mind that the last time we saw each other I promised myself never to care about her again. Never mind that I decided that letting her in made me vulnerable to her malice. Here I am again, back for more, hoping as always that this time will be different.
    As if to remind me that I am no longer a child, the next thing I see is a folding frame with a pair of black-and-whites that depict Aliki and me. On the right, we are small children digging in the sand at the water’s edge at the Bozaïtika, a beach on the outskirts of the city near Demetris’s taverna. On the left, we stand side by side at ancient Olympia. I am twelve and she is fifteen, with breasts and long wavy hair and slender legs. I remember that trip to Olympia. I remember an argument between my mother and Aliki that began shortly after this picture was taken. And while I can no longer remember what the fight was about, I remember watching Aliki stand up to my mother and wishing she could teach me how to be defiant like that.

3
Callie
    Friday
    Aliki pours a coffee for me and slides a plate of biscuits across the kitchen table. I curl my feet up on the chair and hunch around the cup. It’s a cozy kitchen, with just enough room for the round pine table and the four chairs tucked beneath it. When I lean back after taking a sip, my head riffles the pages of the wall calendar. February’s photograph is the peak of nearby Panachaïko dusted with snow.
    “I’ll take you to Nestor’s house later today,” she says. “I started trying to organize it for you, but I didn’t get very far.”
    “Is there as much as I remember?”
    “Probably more. No rush, but when you’re done, we’re moving in.”
    She gets a cup and saucer from a cupboard stacked high with plates.
    “It’ll be nice to have more space,” she says. “Nikos says he’ll redo the garden, and we’re probably adding another level.”
    “You’ll change the house?”
    “It needs it.”
    I tell myself that it’s all right that Aliki feels this way. She cando this. For her, this is simply another move into another hand-me-down property. And just as she has made my aunt Thalia’s house her own, so will she make her own