Page 212 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

something dark and chastening, wounding, at odds with the energetic laughs and

the teasing and the loose pumpkin floral dress she was wearing. I remember
thinking at the time what a good actress she must be to camouflage
disappointment and hurt with a veneer of cheerfulness. Like a mask, I thought,
and was privately pleased with myself for the clever connection.
Later, when I was older, it wasn’t as clear to me. Thinking back on it, there
was something affected about the way she paused when she mentioned the first
husband, the casting down of the gaze, the catch in the throat, the slight quiver of
lips, just as there was about the walloping energy and the joking, the lively,
heavy-footed charm, the way even her slights landed softly, parachuted by a
reassuring wink and laugh. Perhaps they were both trumped-up affectations or
perhaps neither was. It became a blur for me what was performance and what
real—which at least made me think of her as an infinitely more interesting
actress.

“How many times did I come running to this house, Odie?” Madaline said.
Now the smiling again, the swell of laughter. “Your poor parents. But this house
was my haven. My sanctuary. It was. A little island within the greater one.”
Mamá said, “You were always welcomed here.”
“It was your mother who put an end to the beatings, Markos. Did she ever tell
you?”

I said she hadn’t.
“Hardly surprises me. That’s Odelia Varvaris for you.”
Mamá was unfurling the edge of the apron in her lap and flattening it again
with a daydreamy look on her face.
“I came here one night, bleeding from the tongue, a patch of hair ripped from

the temple, my ear still ringing from a blow. He’d really gotten his hooks into
me that time. What a state I was in. What a state!” The way Madaline was telling
it, you might have thought she was describing a lavish meal or a good novel.
“Your mother doesn’t ask because she knows. Of course she knows. She just
looks at me for a long time—at me standing there, trembling—and she says, I
still remember it, Odie, she said, Well, that’s about enough of this business. She
says, We’re going to pay your father a visit, Maddie. And I start begging. I
worried he was going to kill us both. But you know how she can be, your
mother.”
I said I did, and Mamá tossed me a sidelong glance.

“She wouldn’t listen. She had this look. I’m sure you know the look. She
heads out, but not before she picks up her father’s hunting rifle. The whole time
we’re walking to my house, I’m trying to stop her, telling her he hadn’t hurt me