on a shelf over rows of illuminated bottles. Beside it, a picture of an ice-blue mountain lake advertised beer. Constantine took the only empty stool, next to Kazanzakis, who watched the game and ate peanuts with unhungry avidity, as if his true objective was not to eat the peanuts but to reveal the bottom of the dish. Between batters Constantine and Kazanzakis started talking. They talked baseball, then they talked construction. Constantine was foreman on a job just winding up. Kazanzakis was a developer who'd started building sprawls of cheap houses—he called them planned communities—to the north and west of town. They introduced themselves and, upon hearing one another's names, declared their places of origin.
Kazanzakis's grandparents, as it turned out, had lived in a village less than thirty miles from the place where Constantine was born. The two men spoke Greek to each other. They laughed, ordered more beers. By the end of the third inning, Constantine had a new job He was hired to oversee construction of Kazanzakis's newest planned community, which would soon be laid out on a flat brown stretch of reclaimed marshland twenty miles to the north. The men shook hands, ordered another round. Kazanzakis put his thin arm around Constantine's shoulders and announced to the bar, “Hey, sports fans, I want you to meet my new partner. A Greek, a man I can trust.”
It was all chance, a throw of the dice. The unrelenting work of the past fifteen years had meant almost nothing, aside from what it taught Constantine about joists and sashes. What had made his fortune was the decision to go into a tavern on a Tuesday afternoon.
What had made his fortune was being Greek. After all those years of Mary's insistence, “We're Americans, Con. Americans.” Once it started, his Greek good fortune refused to quit. Kazanzakis proved to have a sharp eye for human wishes, a sure knowledge of what people wanted to buy. His houses were inexpensive, but he dressed them up with picket fences and false dormers. He advertised their several opulent features: top-of-the-line appliances, rumpus rooms, two-car garages. Constantine, for his part, knew the corners that could be invisibly cut. He knew about using green wood and plastic pipes; he knew how much time could be saved if you told your men to forget about drilling through the studs for wiring and just smack dents in them with hammers. The houses sold nearly as fast as he and Kazanzakis could get them built. Constantine, who was raised on a thrift hard as bone, kept overhead so low Kazanzakis was often moved to embrace him and call him a magician. He'd never imagined a tract might be so profitable.
Mary could hardly believe how the money grew. Now, finally, she could give beautiful things to the children, although her daughters consistently preferred the cheap and garish. Susan wanted more Barbie clothes and a toy oven in which a lightbulb scorched pans of batter into little round scabs of cake. Zoe wanted Lincoln Logs and a toy rifle and a ratty “coonskin” cap made of dyed rabbit fur that smelled faintly of urine. Mary bought those things and bought others as well, hoping her daughters would learn to see the shimmer that true quality produced in the air of a room. She bought gold bracelets and mohair sweaters and jewelry boxes that opened to reveal a tiny ballerina twirling to the tune of “Fur Elise.” Those gifts were briefly embraced and then discarded. The ruffled dresses were thrown indifferently onto the floor. The imported dolls were left outside, their delicate, hand-wrought faces smiling graciously up into the rain.
Of Mary's children, only Billy wanted the things she wanted to give. He was a dreamy boy who brought books home from the library, who sought hiding places where she could always find him. When she bought him an alpaca coat he wore it to church on Sundays in a spirit of miniature masculine sobriety that rinsed her heart with affection. Although she loved all three children, Billy was the one she could read. For him she bought soft V-necked sweaters from Scotland. She bought a burgundy leather briefcase when he started fifth grade, and a deep-green hunter's cap. For the girls she furnished a dollhouse, which sat first in Susan's room and then in Zoe's. Dust gathered on the intricate wooden furniture, the lamps that really worked. Mary cleaned the dollhouse periodically and, with a pang of guilty pleasure, rearranged the furniture.
1964/ Susan