In my new novel, What’s Left, her aunt Nita embodies a rare quality I’ve come to appreciate. She’s someone who seems to know everyone. She takes an interest in their lives and families. Remembers details. Asks questions. Suggests social connections, job opportunities, resources.
She’s also someone people trust. You can confide in her, find consolation, comfort, compassion.
In the bigger picture, she’s a kind of person who makes community function. I can make a list of people I’ve known who do that.
In my new novel, What’s Left, her parents’ generation recognizes their family business will need to make big changes for survival. For her uncle Dimitri, that includes corporate planning and big investment, once the dust settles.
But first, he has to see exactly what they’ve inherited.
~*~
No matter how much I like the details that shape the events, some just had to be cut from the final story:
The big break with the status quo that occurs in my new novel, What’s Left, still demands a respect for all that’s led up to the transformation.
As she perceives, from a customer’s point of view:
They miss the reliable owners’ familiar faces behind the stools and salt and pepper shakers, along with their comforting banter. Could we ever fill their sturdy shoes? Can we live up to their dependable standards or their reasonable prices? Can we even serve a decent cup of coffee or will we lose our shirts and have to quit the place?
The challenge and opportunity go way beyond that.
It’s a sharp break to a new generation, in more ways than one.
Cassia never has to consider this with her own brothers:
From everything I see, there’s an uncommon bond between the brothers, despite their sexual differences. Yes, they’ve both been promiscuous – and then settled in.
Or does she?
~*~
In writing a novel that’s told by a single character like Cassia, I have to remember that she knows far more about her family than I ever will. Maybe I can’t answer everything, but suppose you had an opportunity?
What would you ask Cassia over dinner? Or somebody in your own family, one on one? (Present or past?)
~*~
Greek salad (horiatiki salata) at Psaropoulo restaurant, Hydra, via Wikimedia Commons
In the family, Cassia may have had food like this.
In some family businesses, the accounting can be rather slipshod. Many of the figures might be stored in someone’s head, rather than on paper. Or on random slips stuffed in a cigar box. Or even scattered around an office. Maybe it’s just one of the hazards of being your own boss.
In my new novel, What’s Left, her grandfather, Stavros, continued some of that custom, but not nearly as much as his parents and their business partners, who happened to be siblings.
When her uncle Dimitri returns to town with a Masters of Business Administration in hand, he needs to get those numbers in order quickly if there’s to be anything of the restaurant and its investments for his brothers and sisters and himself to inherit. It’s a race with time, even before his parents die in their prime, victims of a late-night car crash.
~*~
From what Nita’s said, I’m sure Dimitri was putting in much less – formally, at least. My guess is that he was always thinking about our venture, and many of the social events he attended were primarily for schmoozing. I’d ask Barney, if he’d only answer his phone. And these days, whenever I run into him somewhere, I feel the brush-off. As for knocking on his door? Not as things stand now. Oh, well, maybe someday.
~*~
Maybe we’ll always have things we’re supposed to do but shrug off all the same. Put them aside, unfinished. Simply ignored them. And then there are the emotional blowups. (I’ve been accused of being stuck at age 14 or 17 on that front. What’s wrong with that?)
Have you ever wanted the adults in your life to be, well, more grown up? Like even answering your questions?
~*~
In my novel, the family restaurant could have been like this.
Miss Mendon diner, Worcester, Massachusetts, by Liz West, Boxborough, Massachusetts, via Wikimedia Commons.
One thing her great-grandparents Ilias and Maria introduce to my new novel, What’s Left, is the acknowledgement of how much of the family’s business success results from the members who’ve joined in freely, rather than been born into its tree.
Their daughter, Bella, certainly reinforces the triumph, as do Graham, Pia, Yin, and Cassia’s father a generation later.
So where will it go from there? Is there even really room for more? What if the new members don’t get along?
~*~
In recent years I learned that my own family history would have been much different if two of the wives had not conflicted with each other. Do you know of similar discord?
At one point, Cassia admits being a bit jealous of her brothers’ girlfriends. Have you ever felt the same?
~*~
Veiled head for insertion in a female statue. The nose, the back of the head, and a section near the right ear were affixed. Marble. 2nd century BCE. Archaeological Museum of Rhodes. (Photo by Jebulon via Wikimedia Commons.)
In “Golden Age of Grease,” the second chapter of my new novel, What’s Left, I compress a background history of three generations that lead up to Cassia herself. Thanks to her father’s collected photographs and her aunt Nita’s guidance, she and her best friend forever, cousin Sandra, get a sense of what so attracted him to the entire family. What he saw when he arrived was his vision of an ideal hippie commune working around Carmichael’s, their landmark restaurant. Man, was he in for a surprise!
Nita Zapitapoulos is a special character for me. Long before she becomes Cassia’s aunt, in my new novel What’s Left, she appears in all four of my Hippie Trails volumes as a guardian angel and colleague for Cassia’s future father. She also appears obliquely in notes to my Hometown News novel as a journalism professor.
The character was loosely inspired by a sidekick’s descriptions of the girlfriend he’d come to visit. I may have even met her at the time, although I’ll confess she wasn’t of Greek descent at all. I wish I still had the letters with his lavish descriptions of what so attracted him in his whirlwind adventures. She and I may have even passed each other in the same newsroom while working in different departments; I, though, have never been a photojournalist.
A few years ago, far from where all this took place, a mental connection flashed for me during a conversation after a committee session. “Did you know …?” Yes, she remembered him. We’d both lost contact with him decades ago.
In real life, she’s quite different from the impressions that prompted my fictional character. Still, from everything I see now, I’d say they’re both pretty amazing.
In my newest novel, What’s Left, the common image of a nuclear family is punctured when her father vanishes in an avalanche halfway around the globe when she’s 11. Daddy’s no longer present in the family picture. Only her mother, two older brothers, and Cassia herself. (Plus her aunts, uncles, and close cousins, who completely alter the picture.)
Her obsession to rediscover him brings her face to face with much more than her loss.
Jnana's Red Barn 