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SUMMARY: Today's society searches to acquire things giving little regard to keeping what they already have and which is free and possibly more valuable than all the wealth in the world: their family.

A Family for Marilena

by
Vasilis Afxentiou




The winter Alex last spent alone with his daughter Maria Helen at the old house on Webster Road was a memorable one in that it taught him that fifty was not too old to love and learn.
He was going to have dinner with June early that evening. It was her birthday. He was also preparing for a marriage.
"Marilena--" he called out as soon as he got in, but got no reply.
Maria Helen was not home yet, and he wanted to get it off his chest. He wasn't sure what he was going to say--to her or Fab. "Things can't hang in air forever," he simply defended.
He closed the door behind him and doffed his shoes.
He wiggled his stiff toes and with socked feet drifted into the kitchen and got a Bud.
On his way to the sitting room the wall mirror drew him to it.
Tennis with Marilena pruned his waist some.
"Can't do much with the greying hair though," he told himself. "Anyway, she likes it that way." He didn't fall in with gents dying it. Yet, the silver was healthy and the tanned skin that showed through flattered by contrast. The mirror revealed a tall sturdy man with a mesomorphic build and a Roman face.
He ambled into the living-room where he had come in and picked his shoes up.
The place had not changed much in Fab's absence. The Persian carpet still there, along with the sofa and two chesterfields. The adjoining dining-room boasted a stainless steel table with an oval glass top, six chairs to match, a divan that filled the corner to one side, and an antique bureau sporting on top glass cases that flaunted blue-white china and a set of amber German etched glasses. The last two being wedding presents.
He brought the walking shoes with him to the sitting room.
That's what they called it, the den where Marilena and he spent most of their time home. He dug and wiggled the tired toes into the shag rug that covered half the floor, and dropped the shoes under the stumpy coffee table that squatted between a shabby-looking sofa and the tv. A Whistler's Mother rocker that Fab used to favor lingered by the window.
He sat in it, sipped the Bud, and let himself loosen.
Maria Helen took after her mother in many respects. She seemed to know the needs of a nest, his requisites and wants, and then some. Marilena was more familiar with his moods and temperaments than himself, but kept it tidily to herself.
This interaction of daughters and fathers comforted him. Other times it perplexed him. Yet, he envied the traits his daughter possessed, that most women did. He was thinking of dedication and stuartship.
Marilena's mom had gone to live away in Washington state. It was a story in itself. It took twenty-two, hard-to-describe years in the making. Fab--her whole name was Fabiola--was as competent and resourceful a woman as any of her gender.
Twenty-four years ago they had crashed into each other tearing for the door to the music appreciation class.
Professor Heeks did not abide to late-comers. Bustle, swaying doors and transitory silhouettes, wrought dissonance in his orb of harmony.