Middlesex

. . . as Zizmo races the Packard over the ice. The speedometer needle rises. The engine thunders. Tire chains rooster-tail snow. The Packard hurtles into the darkness, skidding on patches, fishtailing. “Did you two have it all planned?” he shouts. “Have Lina marry an American citizen so she could sponsor you?”

“What are you talking about?” my grandfather tries to reason. “When you and Lina got married, I didn’t even know I was coming to America. Please slow down.”

“Was that the plan? Find a husband and then move into his house!”

The never-failing conceit of Minotaur movies. The monster always approaches from the direction you least expect. Likewise, out on Lake St. Clair, my grandfather has been looking out for the Purple Gang, when in reality the monster is right next to him, at the wheel of the car. In the wind from the open door, Zizmo’s frizzy hair streams back like a mane. His head is lowered, his nostrils flared. His eyes shine with fury.

“Who is it!”

“Jimmy! Turn around! The ice! You’re not looking at the ice.”

“I won’t stop unless you tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell. Lina’s a good girl. A good wife to you. I swear!”

But the Packard hurtles on. My grandfather flattens himself against his seat.

“What about the baby, Jimmy? Think about your daughter.”

“Who says it’s mine?”

“Of course it’s yours.”

“I never should have married that girl.”

Lefty doesn’t have time to argue the point. Without answering any more questions, he rolls out the open door, free of the car. The wind hits him like a solid force, knocking him back against the rear fender. He watches as his muffler, in slow motion, winds itself around the Packard’s back wheel. He feels it tighten like a noose, but then the scarf comes loose from his neck, and time speeds up again as Lefty is thrown clear of the auto. He covers his face as he hits the ice, skidding a great distance. When he looks up again, he sees the Packard, still going. It’s impossible to tell if Zizmo is trying to turn, to brake. Lefty stands up, nothing broken, and watches as Zizmo hurtles crazily on into the darkness . . . sixty yards . . . eighty . . . a hundred . . . until suddenly another sound is heard. Above the engine roar comes a loud crack, followed by a scintillation spreading underfoot, as the Packard hits a dark patch on the frozen lake.

Just like ice, lives crack, too. Personalities. Identities. Jimmy Zizmo, crouching over the Packard’s wheel, has already changed past understanding. Right here is where the trail goes cold. I can take you this far and no further. Maybe it was a jealous rage. Or maybe he was just figuring his options. Weighing a dowry against the expense of raising a family. Guessing that it couldn’t go on forever, this boom time of Prohibition.

And there’s one further possibility: he might have been faking the whole thing.

But there’s no time for these ruminations. Because the ice is screaming. Zizmo’s front wheels crash through the surface. The Packard, as gracefully as an elephant standing on its front legs, flips up onto its grille. There’s a moment where the headlamps illuminate the ice and water below, like a swimming pool, but then the hood crashes through and, with a shower of sparks, everything goes dark.

At Women’s Hospital, Desdemona was in labor for six hours. Dr. Philobosian delivered the baby, whose sex was revealed in the usual manner: by spreading the legs apart and looking. “Congratulations. A son.”

Desdemona, with great relief, cried out, “The only hair is on his head.”

Lefty arrived at the hospital soon thereafter. He had walked back to shore and hitched a ride on a milk truck home. Now he stood at the window of the nursery, his armpits still rank with fear, his right cheek roughened by his fall on the ice and his lower lip swollen. Just that morning, fortuitously, Lina’s baby had gained enough weight to leave the incubator. The nurses held up both children. The boy was named Miltiades after the great Athenian general, but would be known as Milton, after the great English poet. The girl, who would grow up without a father, was named Theodora, after the scandalous empress of Byzantium whom Sourmelina admired. She would later get an American nickname, too.

But there was something else I wanted to mention about those babies. Something impossible to see with the naked eye. Look closer. There. That’s right:

One mutation apiece.

MARRIAGE ON ICE

Jimmy Zizmo’s funeral was held thirteen days later by permission of the bishop in Chicago. For nearly two weeks the family stayed at home, polluted by death, greeting the occasional visitor who came to pay respects. Black cloths covered the mirrors. Black streamers draped the doors. Because a person should never show vanity in the presence of death, Lefty stopped shaving and by the day of the funeral had grown nearly a full beard.