“Mrs. Lindqvist,” I said, “I would like to turn around now.” She looked at me for a moment and nodded, once. I stood up from the chair, which took me a little longer than it once did, and I turned around and faced the glass. Through it I could see my son at the teller line, in the Bengals jacket, holding a deposit slip in his hand. He had not yet noticed me. The bald man stood at his elbow with the briefcase, speaking low. I put my hand on the door, and for the first time in two days I felt entirely, completely calm.
I opened the door and walked into the lobby of the bank on Warsaw Avenue, past the plant in its brass pot, and I said, loudly enough for the tellers to hear, “Peter.” He turned around. I have seen the face of my son a great many times, but I will never forget how it looked then. First he went white. Then red. Then he did something that surprised me. He put down the deposit slip, very gently, as though it might break, and he said in a small voice, “Pop. I can explain.” I said, “Then explain it in the office. With the lady. And with your friend.”
We sat in the glass office, the four of us: Pete, the bald man, Mrs. Lindqvist, and me. The bald man, who gave his name as Gary Fenton, tried first. He said that the guardianship order was legitimate and the doctor report was genuine. Mrs. Lindqvist, calmly, took out her phone and called the Hamilton County Probate Court. She asked for the case number, read it aloud, and listened. “I see,” she said. “Thank you.” She hung up. “Mr. Fenton, there is no such case. There is no such judge. The seal on your order is a rubber stamp from an office supply store.”
A son turned around at a bank window, a ladle was returned to its owner, and a drawer was counted to the penny by a new pair of hands.
Fenton snapped his briefcase shut and stood. Mrs. Lindqvist, without raising her voice, said that the front door of the bank was already locked, and that two Cincinnati police officers were waiting in the lobby. The bald man sat down again. Pete put his face in his hands. “Pop, Richie Castellano promised us one point two million dollars for the corner of Glenway,” he said. “I owe three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on the new kitchen, and the second location in Delhi, and the equipment. Danielle said you would never sell, and that if you were not capable, we could.”
I did not shout. I looked at my son, who has the eyebrows of Eleni and the hands of my father, and I felt the sorrow rise in me like water in a basement. “Peter, I gave you the parlor for one dollar,” I said. “I did it because your mother asked me to, and because I loved you. I never asked for anything back. And you went behind my back to a man your grandfather threw out of his own restaurant.” He wept openly. “Pop, I am so ashamed. I thought if I could just get ahead. I thought you would never need it.”
Two officers came to the door, a man and a woman. They took Fenton by the arm, and he went quietly. They asked if I wished to speak with them about my son. I thought about it for a long time. Through the glass I could see the tellers pretending not to listen. “Officer, I will make a statement about the home equity line, and about Mr. Castellano, and about my daughter in law,” I said. “But I would like to ask you to let my son come home with me tonight. I will bring him in myself in the morning.” The woman officer looked at Mrs. Lindqvist, who nodded.
The bank reversed the entire line of credit, since the signature on the papers was a forgery, and the money that had gone to Olympia Chili Holdings was frozen and then returned. The prosecutor charged Danielle with mail theft and forgery, and she pleaded to a lesser count with probation. Richie Castellano was fined and barred from bringing an action against us. I drove to his office on Montgomery Road with Eleni old ladle in my coat pocket, the long brass one, dented from the day she used it on him in 1998. I set it on his desk. I said only, “She says no again.”
Pete came to Olympia at five o clock the next Monday, in a white apron. I had not asked him to. He stood at the door of the parlor in the dark, with the smell of cumin and cinnamon and onions in the air, and he said, “Pop, what do you want me to do?” I handed him a cash drawer. “Count it,” I said. “To the penny. The way my father taught me.” He stood at the register under the single light and counted. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. When he finished, he looked at me with wet eyes. “Four hundred twelve dollars and sixteen cents,” he said. “Right,” I said.
He worked the counter for a year. At five in the morning he cleaned the grill, and at noon he took orders from the line of lawyers and linemen and nurses, and at night he counted the drawer again. By spring he knew every regular by name and every special by heart. Danielle came by once, in a black coat. I made her a three way, no onions, and put it on the counter. She ate it in silence, and before she left, she said, “Mr. Dimitriou, I am so sorry.” I said, “Eat. It is getting cold.”
On the first Sunday of the Bengals season, the line at Olympia Chili stretched out the door, past the Kroger, down Glenway. I stood behind the counter in my father old apron, squinting at the specials board, which I had to read through a pair of drugstore magnifiers. Pete wrote the numbers of the day on it for me, in chalk, in letters six inches tall. Three way, four dollars and twenty five cents. Coneys, two for three. I read it out loud, slowly, to the whole room. And the whole room, which had come to eat chili, stood up and applauded.
