The Clover House by Henriette Lazaridis Power

only one who needs to have her version of family history set straight.
    “One of the storerooms was full of food. Bags of rice and flour. This was during the war,” she says. “Imagine.”
    “It was not during the war,” says my mother. “I was only sixteen. I know because I remember the book I brought home from school that day.”
    “If it wasn’t during the war, it was right before the war. Anyhow,” Sophia goes on, “you can imagine what happened to that food when water got to it.”
    “It was one giant rice pudding,” Thalia says to Demetra, pinching her cheek.
    “All of it ruined,” says Sophia. “When we needed supplies like that.”
    My mother exhales loudly. “None of it was ruined, because the water went down the drain,” she says.
    I shake my head. “There wasn’t one.”
    “Then someone,” she says, her voice rising, “must have changed it. Things change, Calliope, you know. Because there was a drain in the scullery in the old house when we were children before the war.”
    “What’s so important about a dumb drain?”
    We all look at Demetra, who is pouting into her plate. Thalia caresses her head.
    “It is dumb, Demetraki,” I say, laughing. “You’re absolutely right. Tell us about the parade.”
    Demetra brightens and describes the floats and performers she can’t wait to see tonight. We listen, happy to share in the little girl’s excitement as we pick at the nuts and oranges that Aliki has set out on the table. Finally, Nikos rises and leads the aunts to the living room.
    In the kitchen, I scrape sauce and bits of lamb into the garbage while Aliki stacks the plates. In the hubbub of the aunts, she has forgotten that I’m supposed to be treated specially. It feels good.
    “Do you, at least, remember the story?” I ask.
    “I don’t think anybody does, Paki. It’s all so long ago, and they’re old women now. They’re starting to forget things.”
    “True, but that’s not what just happened here.”
    “Look,” she says, setting the plate down. “
Áse to
. Leave it alone. We grew up with some nice stories. Sometimes they told them one way, sometimes another. Leave it at that. Nikos reads and reads about the war and the civil war, and he’s never any clearer on the details. Even the historians can’t agree on what really happened.”
    As I dry the plates Aliki hands me, I tell myself that she’s right and I should take her approach. It shouldn’t matter. These are only stories, after all. But I can’t deny that it does matter to me. My mother’s stories were the one way I had of connecting to her—of finding some shared refuge from the cloud of her unhappiness. During the winters when I was far from Thalia’s embraces and Sophia’s loving vigilance, those stories gave me a glimpse of mischief and delight. I can’t let them go that easily.

4
Clio
    May 1940
    Clio turned and watched as a low-slung Citroën drove down the dusty street. Her father still insisted on a carriage, declaring that cars were for the profligate. Whoever owned the Citroën might be profligate, but he had passed by with a white-sleeved elbow resting stylishly on the open window, gauntleted fingers drumming the top of the door frame.
    The car tires had kicked up more dust than carriage wheels did. Clio could feel it sticking to her neck where she had begun to sweat a little. The leaves of the sycamores were too young to shade the sidewalks properly, and though there were weeks left to the school year, there was a summer heat in the air. She slowed her pace and let her sisters and brother pass her. After a few steps, they turned and waited.
    “Speed up, Clio,” Sophia said. “Come on.”
    “Go on without me. I don’t care.”
    “Fine.”
    Sophia turned forward again and murmured something to Thalia, who took a peek over her shoulder. Nestor pressed upbehind them. They walked on like that, a few paces ahead of Clio but never outpacing her. Clio knew they desperately wanted to go faster, to