The Greeks of Beaubien Street (7 page)

“I don’t think I’ve ever met the guy! Believe it or not,” he said. “But I have read about him and I’ve heard enough about him from my mom and pop.”

Gus took a drink of coffee and settled back in his chair.

“Like I said, Sophie is a year older than me. Maria was old enough to help downstairs in the store when we were youngsters, so Sophie and I played alone together upstairs unless we were off at school or out in the park. We were close as kids. As soon as she finished high school, she left home. We either got scholarships for college, or worked and paid our way as we went. That’s what Sophie did. She got a loan and started going to secretarial school. It had a small dormitory the female students could live in. She rarely came into town after that.

“It was a one year program. After she graduated she got an apartment in Plymouth. Joan and Peter were getting married and moving there so he would be close to his job at Ford. They encouraged her to apply there, too. Sophie was hired to work in the public relations office. She was a dynamic woman. I think if there’s a case to be made for a woman staying single, it was Sophie. She had a great apartment and traveled all over the world with a couple of her girlfriends. But I knew she was lonely. She wanted kids, too, and back in those days it wasn’t as prevalent, or shall we say
acceptable
, to adopt a kid as a single parent. I mean, it was done, but we had a pretty conservative family and she would’ve suffered a lot of wrath from the parents and her brothers.

“It wasn’t uncommon for Greeks to have arranged marriages, but I think my parents were too busy to arrange any for us. We were all engaged on our own steam by the time we were in college, except for Sophie. My mother was starting to bug her about finding someone, ‘a good Greek boy,’ and getting married. When I graduated from Drexel and Christina and I got married, my parents really started in on her. ‘Everyone else is married!’ they’d yell. ‘What you waitin’ for?’ my mother would say to her. Finally, she told them she did want to get married someday, but no one was interested. We didn’t have the community of close friends like other Greeks here did because our relatives were all in Canada. But my brothers were all out in the world, so our father asked them to help Sophie find a husband.

“Peter worked with a cousin of Joe Papodopolous and evidently, Joe used to hang out with this group of men when they played poker. Pete came to my dad and told him about Joe and we could hear our mother screaming, “A poker friend? You can’t find anyone better?” She had no idea about the family that Joe Papodopolous came from. You know,
the money
. Anyway, evidently it was love at first sight.

“The families wanted to meet, so Peter invited Joe’s to Greektown and they got Sophie to attend. I remember the first time I had a little bit o’ shame about our humble store; Joe’s parents were probably expecting one of the big, fancy restaurants and not our little deli. They couldn’t hide their shock. But the meal was delicious, and Joe couldn’t keep his eyes off Sophie. She was good looking in her youth!”

“Papa! Aunt Sophie is still pretty! Boy, oh boy. Andy, if we ever needed to bribe my dad for anything, I think we got the ammo tonight,” Jill said. “So you’re telling us Uncle Joe and Aunt Sophie have an arranged marriage. It seems to have worked out pretty well for them, I must say.” From Jill’s perspective, theirs looked like the ideal marriage. Sophie came to family

get-togethers alone since the children had grown up. She and Uncle Joe weren’t connected by the hip like so many other couples. Of course, she needed to hear Sophie’s side of the story some day.

Chapter 7

Sophie Zannos Papodopolous lived in a cocoon for so long that she’d forgotten what her original expectations were for marriage. She saw her brothers and their wives interacting and doing things together, going shopping or planning a garden or having friends over for cards. She tried to remember how long it was after her honeymoon before she gave up hope. Stubbornness ran in the family though, so if Joe thought he would be able to ignore her and use her like a maid or a baby machine without her picking a fight, he was wrong. It wasn’t until after their first baby was born that Sophie accepted that her marriage was over. Trying to engage her husband just wasn’t worth the humiliation. He’d be away on a business trip and Sophie would spend hours preparing for his homecoming: primping, getting the house in perfect order, and cooking a favorite meal and he’d ignore her once he got home. She’d be lucky if he kissed her on the cheek. After the children were born, it got worse. He’d be gone for six weeks at a time and wouldn’t call her or email. The first time it happened, she was so worried after days of unanswered voice mail messages and emails to him she called his secretary. It would be the last time she would try to track him down. The phone rang and she ran to pick it up.

“Did you
really
call my office?” It was Joe. No
hello
or
is everything okay?
And he was pissed.

“Yes, I did. You’ve been gone for three days I didn’t know if you were dead or alive, Joe. What’s going on?” she asked.

“Don’t do it again. I’m on business; you knew I was going away. We don’t need to talk every day. I’m hanging up now.” The line was dead. Sophie looked at the phone in her hand incredulous. What if she had gotten sick, or died? Or worse, what if one of the kids got sick? Anger set in. She got her children settled for the night and started to pace. She was up until early morning, determined she would have it out with him when he got home.

The next morning, she got the children up and off to school and came home to the empty house with hopes he would call her. When noon came and he hadn’t gotten in touch yet, she called him again, and every half hour after that. At first, she left messages. “Joe, I can’t live like this.” And, “Please, please tell me what’s wrong.” After a while, she simply hung up when his voicemail picked up. The next day she couldn’t eat, crying off and on all day, looking at the phone and finding the strength not to pick it up. Finally, by the weekend, she wasn’t even thinking of him. She was sure she didn’t love Joe, but felt trapped there; they had three kids together. Wouldn’t it be easier to stay and make a life for her children? What would it cost her?

To her family and friends she pretended nothing was wrong, that she was in a loving marriage, happy and satisfied. Soon, she believed it herself. Everything was okay between them, he was successful because she kept the home fires burning for him and never made any demands. When he came home, he occasionally reached for her for sex, and she complied because she needed it. It wasn’t great, but it was better than doing it alone.

Her family didn’t suspect she was miserable. She’d hated the apartment above the store in Greektown since childhood, so her visits were infrequent and brief. She’d bring her children to see their grandparents, and after they died, only when summoned for a holiday, wedding or funeral. Her brothers’ wives were a bunch of self-centered gossips and she avoided them whenever possible. Her behavior was chalked up to a busy life with a successful husband and three fabulous children. She would perpetuate the myth for as long as she could.

Chapter 8

Andy got up to pour more coffee. When they got together like this to talk, it often went into the night. Andy called his wife to ask her to either join them in the city, or be patient until he got home, but the answering machine picked up.

“What made you stay here, Uncle Gus?” Andy asked. Gus reached for the cream pitcher before he spoke, pouring thick whipping cream into his coffee first. He looked over at his daughter, hoping she was up for full disclosure. He needed to talk about it.

“We almost did leave right after Chris was born.” Jill was looking at him, studying his face for hidden secrets. She had never heard this story. “It was a shock to all of us. We’d never had birth defects in our family’s history, at least any that weren’t covered up. There are myths that the Greeks couldn’t tolerate imperfection in infants and that country people would leave a baby with problems on the hillside to die. My wife wanted to bring Chris home, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it. She was worried about the impact having a baby with so many issues would have on the whole family.” Gus hung his head, looking at his hands. “I should have made a stand. But back then, it made sense. The doctors at the hospital said it would be better for everyone if we put him in an institution. They fed him with a tube at first. After her discharge from the hospital, I took your mother back every afternoon to hold him. They transferred him to a nursing home in Rochester. It was too far to drive daily, but she insisted. If I couldn’t take her, she would take a bus. It caused problems. Finally, my father suggested that she get a driver’s license. No women drove in our family so it seemed like a radical idea.

“But Christina got her license. My father bought her a car, a 1967 Buick. It was so big that we had to park it on Antoine where the street is wider. Every morning she got up at four and started the baking for the day watching the clock the entire time. We baked all the rolls and bread on site back in those days. She’d finish by nine. My father would tell her she could leave. She’d grab her purse, kiss me good bye, and run out the door. It took over an hour to get to Rochester.

“She made the trip daily until he was six months old and could start taking a bottle. Then they moved him to the state home in Plymouth. It was a long trip; she took Grand River to Plymouth Road all the way. I was worried sick about her driving and it never occurred to me to ask my parents if I could go with her. I had to work. It was what men did.

“He got better and better physically. However, there was that intellectual deficit. He wouldn’t have survived living here. People are too cruel. My own mother could barely tolerate acknowledging his existence. “‘We don’t have any retardation in our family,’” she’d say in front of me. My mother was a dichotomy all right; a spiritual giant on one hand and an ignorant peasant on the other. It was what I grew up with. But don’t repeat it to your father,” he said to Andy. “It might start a family war. Big Andy is loyal to a fault about family.” Andy smiled; it was true. He’d never heard his father say a negative thing about anyone, let alone family.

“Of course, just two years later you were born,” Gus looked at Jill. “You were our salvation. You were perfect in every way. You talked before you were one year old, did you know that? I often thought it may have been somewhat of a curse.” He looked at her deadpan. They laughed. “The house was full with you from the start. Your grandparents allowed behavior from you that would have threatened the lives of their own children. I once heard you tell my mother that she would be a lot more attractive if she shaved in the morning, ‘Like my Papou does,’ you said. I thought your mother would faint.”

“I did not say that!” Jill exclaimed.

“Oh, you did, and more. We had to all be on our toes around you and not do anything that we didn’t want the entire neighborhood to know about,” Gus chuckled. And then he quietly said, “The daily trips to Plymouth started up again when you were just a month old. And then when you were eight, she had the accident.” Father and daughter looked at each other sadly. It was not a topic that was discussed. This was an important moment, and although she dreaded it in theory, she knew it was time.

“What happened, Papa? I mean I know what happened, but how did you hear? How did you manage?”

“Andy, are you sure you want to go down this road with us?” Gus looked at his nephew with pity.

“I do, Uncle Gus. I have often thought about what you went through; how I would never be able to do it...raise a kid by myself.” Gus smiled at his nephew.

“I had my parents to help me,” he said. “I remember it like it was yesterday. There was a member of the family available about every twenty-five miles. We often had a relay across the state. I’d take something to Dearborn, Big Andy would take it to Northville, Pete would take it to Nick who worked out of Brighton, and Nick would take it to John in Eaton Rapids. Sophie was in Grand Rapids and Maria was in Saugatuck. No one had to drive more than an hour. My mother had bread and pies transported like that for years. Where was I? Oh, right. I was going to tell you about the day Christina died.

“She was coming home from seeing Christopher and got tired and fell asleep. That’s all there was to it. No one else was injured. The officer at the scene recognized the name and called Nick. Nick came over to tell us. As much as my parents never warmed up to Chris, they were devastated. I remember thinking that I had to keep it together because of Jill, but then I would look at my mother and see that the news had aged her ten years. Pop, too. I couldn’t fall apart because they needed me.”

“I remember the funeral,” Jill said. Gus looked surprised.

“You do?” he asked. “I was in a fog.”

“Gigi kept saying she didn’t know who was going to go to Plymouth now. I said, ‘You can go, Gigi!’ Talk about out of the mouths of babes.” Jill said.

“She did, too,” Gus said. “Although not every day, she made my father take her every Wednesday. We went every Sunday for years, Jillian and me. We’d take Chris to lunch at Bill Knapp’s.” Gus was afraid to say anymore. The obvious discrepancy in Christopher’s life when compared to the rest of the family was glaring. Why didn’t he just bring his son home as soon as his parents died? As if reading his mind, Jill answered him.

“Papa, Chris is happy in his group home. He has lived with that same group of men for over twenty years. If you were to have taken him out, he wouldn’t have had the friends here that he has. He’d be alone. It would have been miserable for him. He probably should have been brought home as a baby and then he would have had a life here. Would people really have said so much?” She wondered
if IQs were lower back in those days
. The thought crossed her mind that her mother might still be alive if the baby Christopher hadn’t been institutionalized.
That’s what people did back then when they had a special needs child; at the advice of their physicians, they put them away,
Jill thought
.