Yet to this day, she never believed Zeus suspected the boys’ paternity. The story of Mickey’s episodic potency was well circulated at St. D’s. Zeus merely meant to do Lidia a favor as a shabby recompense for his behavior.
As for Mickey, his rage at even the mention of Zeus’s name was the only disruption. Whatever had occurred was otherwise a piece of the discarded past, part of Mickey’s illness, which they saw now as a distant sea, remote and unthreatening when considered from the cliff known as good health.
And then she heard that Cass was romancing Dita. She waited for the relationship to pass, but it was clear that Cass was smitten. The jeweler, Angelikos, has told Lidia that in the last two weeks Cass has been in to look at rings. She has sat up nights in despair. How could it be that the damage of a single moment can spill through time to endanger another generation?
Lidia would tear out her tongue before confessing anything to either of her sons. Nor can she approach Zeus. There is no telling what the man’s grandiosity would impel him to do, but Zeus’s actions were certain to show no regard for Mickey. Teri is a possibility, but she might doubt Lidia after all this time, especially knowing how deeply Lidia disapproves of Dita. Worse, Teri might feel obliged to involve her brother. The best alternative is to go directly to Dita. If she will not promise to give up Cass, then Lidia will have to try Teri next.
Close to 6 p.m., just as the picnic is scheduled to conclude, the skies open. The guests run in all directions, but many, hoping to wait out the worst of the pelting downpour, crowd through the rear door of Zeus’s house, which is open so the guests can use the bathrooms nearby. Knowing this, Lidia has already planned to hide inside. She has told Cass that Teri will drive her home and said just the opposite to Teri. But now, as dozens crowd into Zeus’s rear hall, she takes advantage of the confusion to slide past the velvet rope looped between two brass stanchions that closes off the upper stories. Dita’s room is the first door she opens on the second floor, with a collection of paper dolls pasted to the walls, bizarre decorations Lidia thinks for a girl of twenty-four. She finds a magazine and takes a seat in Dita’s bathroom on the commode, then stands for a second to consider herself in the mirror, summoning again her dark-eyed look of imperial strength. She believes in will.
24
Zeus had left his sister a considerable bequest, and Teri had been a shrewd businessperson in her own right, often investing in real estate with her brother. Her condo occupied far too much space for one person, especially somebody who had trouble seeing or getting about. Yet Aunt Teri was basically trapped here by her treasures, which she’d accumulated around the world and with which, Hal said, she would never part. He claimed she was like one of the pharaohs who would prefer to be entombed with all the stuff.
The condo was in one of the lavish old Art Deco buildings constructed in the 1920s on the river’s edge, not far from Center City. It sported fancy limestone arches and decorations on the exterior, and a red tile roof. Teri’s apartment had the feeling of a Fabergé egg, every inch elaborately decorated and ribbed in gilt. Each object was gold-the picture frames, the table legs. Even the many glass display cases for her various collections were etched in gold leaf. Within the boxes were the eclectic range of things that fascinated Teri-African jewelry, buttons of whalebone, antique children’s toys, and of course erotica. An entire case, a yard square, was dedicated to phalluses-a Greek tradition, she pointed out, but one that nonetheless sent her nephew screaming. Hal walked in with a scarf and covered the case the minute he arrived.
Teri had welcomed Evon’s request for a meeting without any questions. Tim had wanted to come, too, but Evon told him without further explanation that she felt Teri and she had a rapport.
“So, what’s up?” Teri had a highball that her servant, old German, had poured for her without apparent instruction, and she settled herself on the large chesterfield with a flowery pattern, her cane at hand almost in the manner of a scepter. Even at home, Teri was in her heavy makeup and jewelry. Seated ten feet away, Evon could smell the old lady’s perfume. On the gold-leafed wooden coffee table in front of her, Teri had everything she might need positioned precisely so she could find it-the remotes for the TV and the audio system, a cordless telephone, her drink and a golden bell, presumably used to summon German.
“We got some surprising results from our DNA tests,” Evon told her.
Teri screwed up her stoplight-colored mouth and made no effort to contain herself.
“Fuck,” she said. “I was afraid of this.”
“Is that why you wanted Hal to stop the investigation?”
Teri didn’t respond, just shook her head of broom-straw hair from side to side.
“What a goddamned mess,” she finally said. “All right. Tell me.”
Evon tried to explain the DNA testing protocol and how it had inadvertently turned into a paternity test, but Teri interrupted.
“Don’t beat around the bush, dear.”
Evon sensed already that she wasn’t the one holding back information.
“Well, Hal isn’t Zeus’s son. Not biologically.”
“Fuck,” Teri said again. “You’re not going to tell him, are you?”
“That’s why I’m here. Tim and I-we don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“That’s for damn sure. It would break him in two. Definitely not.”
“If worse came to worst, we wanted to be able to say we talked to you and that you agreed it wasn’t in Hal’s best interest to share that information with him.”
“Scapegoat, right? That’s what you’re looking for?”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Put it however you want. You can’t tell him. Period.” Teri frumped around on the sofa, agitated by the notion, and unconcerned about the crossed obligations Evon felt. “I suppose you’re wondering whose he is?”
“I’m not sure it’s my place.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Just so you understand how it happened. And why Hal can’t find out. Did you ever hear that crap how my brother was a big hero who nearly died in an army hospital during World War II?”
“Hal talks about that all the time.”
“Well, it was true, in a way. But Zeus wasn’t overseas. He was in basic training. And he got the mumps.”
“Like kids?”
“Pretty serious with a grown-up. Especially a man. It nearly did him in. One of his senior officers was a Greek and he called my father and we all took the train down to Fort Barkley in Texas. Zeus was pretty fuckin’ sick, I want to tell you. Fever of 106. Face was the size of a watermelon and his balls had swollen up, they looked like a couple of damson plums. Took a peek when my folks weren’t looking. Quite a sight. Anyway, he made it. But the doctors told us at the time, there wasn’t much chance he was going to be able to have kids.
“So when he mustered out and comes back with Hermione and Herakles, I knew something was up. He kind of dripped out the story over the years. Hermione, you know, she was a Vasilikos. Did you hear that?”
“Greek mobsters, right?”
“Right. Yeah, my dad-what a dickhead that man was-he was a big Mafia wannabe. And he had the wrong kind of acquaintances in Athens and Zeus went to pay respects. Hal was just a newborn, a month or so old. Family was telling some fairy tale that the father was a dead Resistance fighter, but apparently she’d spread her legs for some German colonel, who’d skipped town when the Americans kicked the Nazis’ brown-shirted behinds. My big brother was the kind to see an opportunity. And Hermione, no way around it, she was a piece of ass in those days. So he came back here with a wife and an heir and a duffel bag full of money. And in some ways, it all worked out.