Long term debt

Long Term Debt

When my father passed away, I moved back to Winnipeg to take care of my mother the same

way I had taken care of her mother--Yiayia Athina--when I was in my early teens and my parents were at

our restaurant all day, from sunrise until two or three in the morning, seven days a week.

I also left my wife and job in Calgary to run Chubby's again and see if I could maybe sell it,

although that didn't seem promising. The business had been going downhill for years as the Dominion

slaughterhouse and other industries and offices around there fell victims to various recessions and

downsizings. The meagre funds Dad had left in the business account were melting away like wax on a

lighted candle, and I found myself using some of my own money to repair and replace a lot of the ancient

equipment in the place.

"Aphro phoned today," Mom said, finishing off her demi-tasse of fragrant Greek coffee, and

groaning as she stood up stiffly to take her cup and saucer to the sink. "Give her a call later, when you get a

chance. She's had a hard time of it since Paraskevas died."

"I'm pretty busy, Mom, I'll see if I can today because I'm really short-staffed right now."

"Don't turn your back on family when they need you, Peter. That's no good."

She gripped the kitchen counter and steadied herself as she shuffled over to the window to

light the incense under the Panagia icon. The pungent smoke swirled in the sunlight from the window.

Dad's funeral three months earlier was the first time I had been inside a Greek Orthodox church in at least

five years.

When I was ten and my brother Jimmy was eight, my parents moved us all to Greece without

even discussing it with us beforehand. It certainly wasn't something my brother and I were looking forward to

--we hated leaving Canada with its hockey and baseball and football, and endless, open grass-covered fields

and bike paths in the bushes behind our little house on Dumas Road, just off Highway 59, and a ten minute

drive from Chubby's Burgers and Chips, in the fetid, but comforting shadow of the Dominion Packers meat-

packing plant and the enormous CNR compound at Symington Yard.

Living in Greece the next couple years was quite a difficult adjustment--in Canada, we had

been teased and bullied when the kids from school heard our parents speaking Greek to us, or when they

would see us leaving our house dressed in full Greek costume for some Greek or Sunday School event; and

in Greece we were taunted with catcalls of "Americanaki" and always made to feel like outsiders at the school

and playground.

We lived with my dad's cousin while we were in Greece, so at least we could hang out with

our cousins--John, who was ten and taught us to play card games like xeri and diloti (we taught him table

hockey on the set we had brought from Canada), and his sister, Aphrodite, who was eighteen. Aphrodite

took an instant liking to me for some reason, and would pinch me and hug me and get quite physical, which

I really didn't understand at the time.

Things really blew up in the summer of 1974, with violent protests and terrorism directed

toward the CIA-backed Greek dictatorship (another fact that didn't make us popular with other Greek kids,

who saw us as Americans from Canada), and skirmishes with the Turks in Cyprus, in an attempt to unite the

island with Greece--so, just as quickly as we had arrived in Greece, we moved back to Canada, bringing

Yiayia Athina with us. Fortunately, our parents had kept Chubby's going while we were in Greece, with Dad's

buddy Steve running it. For some reason, my parents had agreed to take cousin Aphrodite back with us so she

could work in the restaurant and maybe go to school, because she really wasn't doing much in my parents'

hometown in the remote mountains of southern Greece. I later learned that Aphrodite had been seeing a

guy from a nearby town, which was taboo in that primitive time and place, and, of course, that definitely

figured in the decision to send her to Canada.

Aphrodite worked as a waitress at Chubby's and was soon dating one of the prep cooks,

which my parents quickly stopped by firing the young man. Shortly after that, Aphrodite began coming to

my bedroom after midnight, when Jimmy was fast asleep, and my parents were still at the restaurant winding

things down and cleaning the place from top to bottom--they were real sticklers for cleanliness.

Aphrodite wouldn't say a word to me--just sneak into my bed and hold me very

tightly against her body. She would stay with me until about two in the morning and then leave like a ghost

in the darkness before my parents came home.

I don't know what she got from me, but she did treat me kindly and tried to teach

me things about life. She would buy me presents quite often--albums like "Twenty Heavy Hits" and "Bridge

over Troubled Water" and ask me to translate Tommy Roe's "Dizzy" for her, for some reason. She also told

me that friendships in Greece were strong and longer lasting than they were here in Canada, and that most

young men in Greece learned about sex from prostitutes. It was pretty heavy stuff for a naive kid.

My parents would throw these huge parties in our wood-panelled, tiny rec room on

their name days. It was like being on the set of Irma La Douce--the women all had beehive hairdos and tons

of make up and short dresses and high heels, as they danced seductively and playfully to the jangling,

clattering bouzouki records spinning on my parents' turntable. The men were all still lean and hard from their

years in Greece during World War Two and the Greek Civil War, although some were getting softer with all

the food and relative luxuries available in Canada. They had suspicious, mistrusting eyes and were quick to

anger. Everyone was smoking. Both men and women were young and full of energy and the exuberance that

being liberated from their parents' and homeland's tight controls had granted them. There were always close

to a hundred people packed into that sweaty, smoky three hundred square foot basement. It reeked of beer

and ouzo and smoke and sweat and stale perfume--and lust and freedom and desire. Aphrodite would flirt

with several of the single men, and some of the husbands as well, as they danced in a ridiculous display of

desperate machismo. That's how it looked to me as my brother and I sat at the top of the stairs and watched

the Dionysian orgy go on for hours until they all spilled out onto our backyard to have Greek coffee "with

the little birds at dawn" as my Uncle Chris would always say.

I would be withdrawn and quiet for a week following these parties as I remembered

the image of Aphrodite flirting and undulating with the sweaty men.

"Are you okay?" she asked, in a tender whisper the next night as he moved quietly

next to me and wrapped her arms and legs around my body.

"I'm tired," I said quietly, not turning around to face her.

She still stayed next to me, but didn't move or say anything else, and,as usual, left

silently before my parents got home.

A couple years later, and older Greek guy named Paraskevas blew into town--

apparently he had jumped ship at Vancouver, and he and Aphrodite started going out. Then there

was a big fire that destroyed the old Parthenon Restaurant in downtown Winnipeg, near the train station,

and Paraskevas and Aphrodite left Winnipeg in the middle of the night, eloped and moved to Sudbury where

they joined his two brothers in running a successful diner--I think it was called "Three Brothers Coney

Lunch."

About five years later, Paraskevas and his brother Ilias came to Winnipeg to teach my

father how to make the coney sauce they were famous for in Sudbury. They put it on all their burgers and

hot dogs and even on poutine and omelets. Apparently, it was a huge success and customers would buy

gallons of it to take home and freeze or pack with them on planes to cities all over North America. Dad

was quite excited to learn the recipe, so we put Paraskevas and Ilias up in our house and every day for hours

my father would be cooking non-stop with them, trying to master this coney sauce. They cooked at home

because they didn't want Chubby's staff to know the recipe...it was like the culinary version of the

Manhattan Project, but sweatier and much more fragrant. Our kitchen was like a wrestling ring with these

three big hairy guys in old school white undershirts squeezing past each other, jostling for position around

the stovetop, yelling and sweating profusely. They would stop periodically and wipe their sweaty

brows and arms and hairy backs with the same towels they used to wipe up sauce that boiled over onto

the stove. For hours they chopped onions and garlic and parsley, and stirred beef and tomato sauce and

tomato paste. They added coffee and some secret ingredient in a dark bag that oozed blood. At the end

they added nutmeg and a cinnamon stick and lowered the hear for a one hour simmer.

They all sat and had a cigarette and several glasses of ouzo together as the pots

simmered. The kitchen looked like a slaughterhouse--sauce had splattered all over the floor and walls and

table and chairs; onto the fridge and even the window. The house smelled of meat and onions, tomato

and nutmeg, cinnamon and garlic for weeks. The sauce was quite a hit with our customers and a lot of

other Greek restaurants in Winnipeg produced copycat coney sauces.

Paraskevas died about five years ago, and my whole family went to funeral in Sudbury.

I hadn't seen Aphrodite for years, and it was quite awkward interacting with her again, but she did seem

moved and grateful that I had come.

These memories all swirled through my head as I drove from Mom's house to

Chubby's, and by the time I got there I felt drained and unsteady. I was lucky that it wasn't very busy for

lunch so I kept myself occupied doing all sorts of prep work and putting off the dreaded phone call.

I cooked a couple batches of coney sauce, filling the small kitchen with its sweet, spicy scent. The previous

night I had mixed up a batch of dough for whole wheat submarine buns and lefty it in a covered plastic

tub in the walk-in cooler for a slow ferment. Now I punched the risen dough down, enjoying the yeasty,

earthy aroma and started shaping the long loaves and placing them gently on the greased sheet pan for

the final rise before I would bake them off in about an hour, hour and a half, or so. Dad had always just

used bread from a wholesale bakery in East Kildonan for the sandwiches, but I had really gotten into

baking bread during the last few years, so I started baking the loaves myself. It was a lot of work, but I

enjoyed it and it was cheaper, and, surprisingly, the cranky old clientele seemed to appreciate it.

A long-distance ring on our old-school rotary counter phone interrupted my

daydreaming as I was shaping the loaves.

"Chubby's," I answered, even though I knew it would be Aphrodite. Nobody ever

called Chubby's Burgers and Chips long-distance.

"Peter, is that you?" Aphrodite said in Greek.

"Hi Aphrodite," I felt choked. "How are you doing?"

"I am no doing good, Peter mou. Things are bad here, very bad."

"Yeah, it's tough all over...what can you do?" I reverted back to English.

"Paraskevas' stupid brothers, they kicked me and Tony out from the restaurant.

They are backstabbers who will rot in hell! They says Paraskevas did not pay for full share of the

restaurant."

"That's crazy," I said, dooding nervously on the back of a pad of take-our

receipts on the counter.

Every couple years since I'd gotten a job, Aphrodite had called me up with some

sob story or another and ask me for a loan...which she would never attempt to pay back. She would

always make me swear not to tell my parents or her husband or my wife. At first, I would tell my wife,

and it caused a lot of tension and anger, and then I stopped telling her and I would feel guilty and angry

inside for all the secrets Aphro had coerced me into keeping during my adolescence, and the hold she

stilled seemed to have on me and my life.

"Peter, I'm going to need some help. The bastards want to kick me our on the

street. They won't be satisfied until I am left with nothing. I don't understand! They have no family feelings.

They're cold--Canadezoi--they don't even care if their nephew...their brother's son!...They don't care if he

suffers. What kind of people are they? I don't understand..."

"That's terrible. I didn't realize things were that bad. I'm having a tough..."

"They're not like you and me, Peter, and your father and your mother. They would

never let me suffer and be abused like this."

"Aphro, I'm sorry, but I don't have anything to give right now...with the divorce

and the expenses here at the restaurant."

"Peter, I love you, please...you know..."

I was silent for a moment.

"Okay, if you don't want to do something, then I'm gonna call your mother.

Theia will not abandon me and my son. She will not let us starve."

"No, Aphrodite. Don't do that! Mom is very weak right now. She can't handle too

much pressure. Please..."

"Peter, why are you like this? You owe me...I took care of you and your brother

while your parents worked...I gave up my youth for you...if you can't do it for me, at least think of the

memory of your Uncle Paraskevas. He would do anything for your father and your family. How many times

did he go to Winnipeg to run the business while your father was sick..."

"I know..."

"You don't know! You were in Calgary with your princess! Ah! I thought you

were a Greek man, but you're just like the Canadezoi, you don't have the Greek family feelings..."

"Aphro, I am sorry. There's nothing left right now. we have to take care of

ourselves. I'm sorry..."

She hung up and I was left in the silent kitchen, numb and empty.

At the front counter, the delivery tablet beeped with a new incoming order.