"You don't want a girl. Girls are too much trouble. You have to worry about them going with the boys. You have to get a dowry and find a husband-"

"They don't have dowries in America, Desdemona."

The spoon began to move.

"If it's a boy, I'll kill you."

"A daughter you'll fight with."

"A daughter I can talk to."

"A son you will love."

The spoon's arc increased.

"It's... it's..."

"What?"

"Start saving money."

"Yes?"

"Lock the windows."

"Is it? Is it really?"

"Get ready to fight."

"You mean it's a..."

"Yes. A girl. Definitely."

"Oh, thank God."

...And a walk-in closet being cleaned out. And the walls being painted white to serve as a nursery. Two identical cribs arrive from Hudson's. My grandmother sets them up in the nursery, then hangs a blanket between them in case her child is a boy. Out in the hall, she stops before the vigil light to pray to the All-Holy: "Please don't let my baby be this thing a hemophiliac. Lefty and I didn't know what we were doing. Please, I swear I will never have another baby. Just this one."

Thirty-three weeks. Thirty-four. In uterine swimming pools, babies perform half-gainers, flipping over headfirst. But Sourmelina and Desdemona, so synchronized in their pregnancies, diverged at the end. On December 17, while listening to a radio play, Sourmelina removed her earphones and announced that she was having pains. Three hours later, Dr. Philobosian delivered a girl, as Desdemona predicted. The baby weighed only four pounds three ounces and had to be kept in an incubator for a week. "See?" Lina said to Desdemona, gazing at the baby through the glass. "Dr. Phil was wrong. Look. Her hair's black. Not red."

Jimmy Zizmo approached the incubator next. He removed his hat and bent very close to squint. And did he wince? Did the baby's pale complexion confirm his doubts? Or provide answers? As to why a wife might complain of aches and pains? Or why she might be conveniently cured, in order to prove his paternity? (Whatever his doubts, the child was his. Sourmelina's complexion had merely stolen the show. Genetics, a crapshoot, entirely.) All I know is this: shortly after Zizmo saw his daughter, he came up with his final scheme. A week later, he told Lefty, "Get ready. We have business tonight."

And now the mansions along the lake are lit with Christmas lights. The great snow-covered lawn of Rose Terrace, the Dodge mansion, boasts a forty-foot Christmas tree trucked in from the Upper Peninsula. Elves race around the pine in miniature Dodge sedans. Santa is chauffeured by a reindeer in a cap. (Rudolph hasn't been created yet, so the reindeer's nose is black.) Outside the mansion's gates, a black-and-tan Packard passes by. The driver looks straight ahead. The passenger gazes out at the enormous house.

Jimmy Zizmo is driving slowly because of the chains on the tires. They've come out along E. Jefferson, past Electric Park and the Belle Isle Bridge. They've continued through Detroit's East Side, following Jefferson Avenue. (And now we're here, my neck of the woods: Grosse Pointe. Here's the Starks' house, where Clementine Stark and I will "practice" kissing the summer before third grade. And there's the Baker & Inglis School for Girls, high on its hill over the lake.) My grandfather is well aware that Zizmo hasn't come to Grosse Pointe to admire the big houses. Anxiously, he waits to see what Zizmo has in mind. Not far from Rose Terrace, the lakefront opens up, black, empty, and frozen solid. Near the bank the ice piles up in chunks. Zizmo follows the shoreline until he comes to a gap in the road where boats launch in summer. He turns in to it and stops.

"We're going over the ice?" my grandfather says.

"Easiest way to Canada at the moment."

"Are you sure it will hold?"

In response to my grandfather's question, Zizmo only opens his door: to facilitate escape. Lefty follows suit. The Packard's front wheels drop onto ice. It feels as if the entire frozen lake shifts. A high-pitched noise follows, as when teeth bear down on ice cubes. After a few seconds, this stops. The rear wheels drop. The ice settles.

My grandfather, who hasn't prayed since he was in Bursa, has the impulse to give it another go. Lake St. Clair is controlled by the Purple Gang. It provides no trees to hide behind, no side roads to sneak down. He bites his thumb where the nail is missing.

Without a moon, they see only what the insectile headlamps illuminate: fifteen feet of granular, ice-blue surface, crisscrossed by tire tracks. Vortices of snow whirl up in front of them. Zizmo wipes the fogged windshield with his shirt sleeve. "Keep a lookout for dark ice."

"Why?"

"That means it's thin."

It's not long before the first patch appears. Where shoals rise, lapping water weakens the ice. Zizmo steers around it. Soon, however, another patch appears and he has to go in the other direction. Right. Left. Right. The Packard snakes along, following the tire tracks of other rumrunners. Occasionally an ice house blocks their path and they have to back up, return the way they came. Now to the right, now the left, now backward, now forward, moving into the darkness over ice as smooth as marble. Zizmo leans over the wheel, squinting toward where the beams die out. My grandfather holds his door open, listening for the sound of the ice groaning...

...But now, over the engine noise, another noise starts up. Across town on this very same night, my grandmother is having a nightmare. She's in a lifeboat aboard the Giulia Giulia. Captain Kontoulis kneels between her legs, removing her wedding corset. He unlaces it, pulls it open, while puffing on a clove cigarette. Desdemona, filled with embarrassment at her sudden nakedness, looks down at the object of the captain's fascination: a heavy ship's rope disappears inside her. "Heave ho!" Captain Kontoulis shouts, and Lefty appears, looking concerned. He takes the end of the rope and begins pulling. And then: Pain. Dream pain, real but not real, just the neurons firing. Deep inside Desdemona, a water balloon explodes. Warmth gushes against her thighs as blood fills the lifeboat. Lefty gives a tug on the rope, then another. Blood spatters the captain's face, but he lowers his brim and weathers it. Desdemona cries out, the lifeboat rocks, and then there's a popping sound and she feels a sick sensation, as if she's being torn in two, and there, on the end of the rope, is her child, a little knot of muscle, bruise-colored, and she looks to find the arms and cannot, and she looks to find the legs and cannot, and then the tiny head lifts and she looks into her baby's face, a single crescent of teeth opening and closing, no eyes, no mouth, only teeth, flapping open and shut...

Desdemona bolts awake. It's a moment before she realizes that her actual, real-life bed is soaked through. Her water has broken...

...while out on the ice the Packard's headlamps brighten with each acceleration, as more juice flows from the battery. They're in the shipping lane now, equidistant from both shores. The sky a great black bowl above them, pierced with celestial fires. They can't remember the way they came now, how many turns they took, where the bad ice is. The frozen terrain is scrawled with tire tracks leading in every possible direction. They pass the carcasses of old jalopies, front ends fallen through the ice, doors riddled with bullet holes. There are axles lying about, and hubcaps, and a few spare tires. In the darkness and whirling snow, my grandfather's eyes play tricks on him. Twice he thinks he sees a phalanx of cars approaching. The cars toy with them, appearing now in front, now to the side, now behind, coming and going so quickly he can't be sure if he saw them at all. And there is another smell in the Packard now, above leather and whiskey, a stringent, metallic smell overpowering my grandfather's deodorant: fear. It's right then that Zizmo, in a calm voice, says, "Something I always wondered about. Why don't you ever tell anyone that Lina is your cousin?"

The question, coming out of the blue, takes my grandfather off guard. "We don't keep it a secret."

"No?" says Zizmo. "I've never heard you mention it."

"Where we come from, everybody is a cousin," Lefty tries to joke. Then: "How much farther do we have to go?"

"Other side of the shipping lane. We're still on the American side."

"How are you going to find them out here?"

"We'll find them. You want me to speed up?" Without waiting for a reply, Zizmo steps on the accelerator.

"That's okay. Go slow."

"Something else I always wanted to know," Zizmo says, accelerating.

"Jimmy, be safe."

"Why did Lina have to leave the village to get married?"

"You're going too fast. I don't have time to check the ice."

"Answer me."

"Why did she leave? There was no one to marry. She wanted to come to America."

"Is that what she wanted?" He accelerates again.

"Jimmy. Slow down!"

But Zizmo pushes the pedal to the floor. And shouts, "Is it you!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Is it you!" Zizmo roars again, and now the engine is whining, the ice is whizzing by underneath the car. "Who is it!" he demands to know. "Tell me! Who is it?"...

...But before my grandfather can come up with an answer, another memory comes careening across the ice. It is a Sunday night during my childhood and my father is taking me to the movies at the Detroit Yacht Club. We ascend the red-carpeted stairs, passing silver sailing trophies and the oil portrait of the hydroplane racer Gar Wood. On the second floor, we enter the auditorium. Wooden folding chairs are set up before a movie screen. And now the lights have been switched off and the clanking projector shoots out a beam of light, showing a million dust motes in the air.

The only way my father could think of to instill in me a sense of my heritage was to take me to dubbed Italian versions of the ancient Greek myths. And so, every week, we saw Hercules slaying the Nemean lion, or stealing the girdle of the Amazons ("That's some girdle, eh, Callie?"), or being thrown gratuitously into snake pits without textual support. But our favorite was the Minotaur...

...On the screen an actor in a bad wig appears. "That's Theseus," Milton explains. "He's got this ball of string his girlfriend gave him, see. And he's using it to find his way back out of the maze."

Now Theseus enters the Labyrinth. His torch lights up stone walls made of cardboard. Bones and skulls litter his path. Bloodstains darken the fake rock. Without taking my eyes from the screen, I hold out my hand. My father reaches into the pocket of his blazer to find a butterscotch candy. As he gives it to me, he whispers, "Here comes the Minotaur!" And I shiver with fear and delight.

Academic to me then, the sad fate of the creature. Asterius, through no fault of his own, born a monster. The poisoned fruit of betrayal, a thing of shame hidden away; I don't understand any of that at eight. I'm just rooting for Theseus...

...as my grandmother, in 1923, prepares to meet the creature hidden in her womb. Holding her belly, she sits in the backseat of the taxi, while Lina, up front, tells the driver to hurry. Desdemona breathes in and out, like a runner pacing herself, and Lina says, "I'm not even mad at you for waking me up. I was going to the hospital in the morning anyway. They're letting me take the baby home." But Desdemona isn't listening. She opens her prepacked suitcase, feeling among nightgown and slippers for her worry beads. Amber like congealed honey, cracked by heat, they've gotten her through massacres, a refugee march, and a burning city, and she clicks them as the taxi rattles over the dark streets, trying to outrace her contractions...

...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.

The failure of the police to recover the body had caused the delay. On the day after the accident, two detectives had gone out to inspect the scene. The ice had refrozen during the night and a few inches of new snow had fallen. The detectives trudged back and forth, searching for tire tracks, but after a half hour gave up. They accepted Lefty's story that Zizmo had gone ice-fishing and might have been drinking. One detective assured Lefty that bodies often turned up in the spring, remarkably preserved because of the freezing water.

The family went ahead with their grief. Father Stylianopoulos brought the case to the attention of the bishop, who granted the request to give Zizmo an Orthodox funeral, provided an interment ceremony be held at the graveside if the body were later found. Lefty took care of the funeral arrangements. He picked out a casket, chose a plot, ordered a headstone, and paid for the death notices in the newspaper. In those days Greek immigrants were beginning to use funeral parlors, but Sourmelina insisted that the viewing be held at home. For over a week mourners arrived into the darkened sala sala, where the window shades had been drawn and the scent of flowers hung heavy in the air. Zizmo's shadowy business associates made visits, as well as people from the speakeasies he supplied and a few of Lina's friends. After giving the widow their condolences, they crossed the living room to stand before the open coffin. Inside, resting on a pillow, was a framed photograph of Jimmy Zizmo. The picture showed Zizmo in three-quarters profile, gazing up toward the celestial glow of studio lighting. Sourmelina had cut the ribbon between their wedding crowns and placed her husband's inside the coffin, too.

Sourmelina's anguish at her husband's death far exceeded her affection for him in life. For ten hours over two days she keened over Jimmy Zizmo's empty coffin, reciting the mirologhia mirologhia. In the best histrionic village style, Sourmelina unleashed soaring arias in which she lamented the death of her husband and castigated him for dying. When she was finished with Zizmo she railed at God for taking him so soon, and bemoaned the fate of her newborn daughter. "You are to blame! It is all your fault!" she cried. "What reason was there for you to die? You have left me a widow! You have left your child on the streets!" She nursed the baby as she keened and every so often held her up so that Zizmo and God could see what they had done. The older immigrants, hearing Lina's rage, found themselves returning to their childhood in Greece, to memories of their own grandparents' or parents' funerals, and everyone agreed that such a display of grief would guarantee Jimmy Zizmo's soul eternal peace.

In accordance with Church law, the funeral was held on a weekday. Father Stylianopoulos, wearing a tall kalimafkion kalimafkion on his head and a large pectoral cross, came to the house at ten in the morning. After a prayer was said, Sourmelina brought the priest a candle burning on a plate. She blew it out, the smoke rose and dispersed, and Father Stylianopoulos broke the candle in two. After that, everyone filed outside to begin the procession to the church. Lefty had rented a limousine for the day, and opened the door for his wife and cousin. When he got in himself, he gave a small wave to the man who had been chosen to stay behind, blocking the doorway to keep Zizmo's spirit from reentering the house. This man was Peter Tatakis, the future chiropractor. Following tradition, Uncle Pete guarded the doorway for more than two hours, until the service at the church was over. on his head and a large pectoral cross, came to the house at ten in the morning. After a prayer was said, Sourmelina brought the priest a candle burning on a plate. She blew it out, the smoke rose and dispersed, and Father Stylianopoulos broke the candle in two. After that, everyone filed outside to begin the procession to the church. Lefty had rented a limousine for the day, and opened the door for his wife and cousin. When he got in himself, he gave a small wave to the man who had been chosen to stay behind, blocking the doorway to keep Zizmo's spirit from reentering the house. This man was Peter Tatakis, the future chiropractor. Following tradition, Uncle Pete guarded the doorway for more than two hours, until the service at the church was over.

The ceremony contained the full funeral liturgy, omitting only the final portion where the congregation is asked to give the deceased a final kiss. Instead, Sourmelina passed by the casket and kissed the wedding crown, followed by Desdemona and Lefty. Assumption Church, which at that time operated out of a small storefront on Hart Street, was still less than a quarter full. Jimmy and Lina had not been regular churchgoers. Most of the mourners were old widows for whom funerals were a form of entertainment. At last the pallbearers brought the casket outside for the funeral photograph. The participants clustered around it, the simple Hart Street church in the background. Father Stylianopoulos took his position at the head of the casket. The casket itself was reopened to show the photo of Jimmy Zizmo resting against the pleated satin. Flags were held over the coffin, the Greek flag on one side, the American flag on the other. No one smiled for the flash. Afterward, the funeral procession continued to Forest Lawn Cemetery on Van Dyke, where the casket was put in storage until spring. There was still a possibility that the body might materialize with the spring thaw.

Despite the performance of all the necessary rites, the family remained aware that Jimmy Zizmo's soul wasn't at rest. After death, the souls of the Orthodox do not wing their way directly to heaven. They prefer to linger on earth and annoy the living. For the next forty days, whenever my grandmother misplaced her dream book or her worry beads, she blamed Zizmo's spirit. He haunted the house, making fresh milk curdle and stealing the bathroom soap. As the mourning period drew to an end, Desdemona and Sourmelina prepared the kolyvo kolyvo. It was like a wedding cake, made in three blindingly white tiers. A fence surrounded the top layer, from which grew fir trees made of green gelatin. There was a pond of blue jelly, and Zizmo's name was spelled out in silver-coated dragees. On the fortieth day after the funeral, another church ceremony was held, after which everyone returned to Hurlbut Street. They gathered around the kolyvo kolyvo, which was sprinkled with the powdered sugar of the afterlife and mixed with the immortal seeds of pomegranates. As soon as they ate the cake, they could all feel it: Jimmy Zizmo's soul was leaving the earth and entering heaven, where it couldn't bother them anymore. At the height of the festivities, Sourmelina caused a scandal when she returned from her room wearing a bright orange dress.

"What are you doing?" Desdemona whispered. "A widow wears black for the rest of her life."

"Forty days is enough," said Lina, and went on eating.

Only then could the babies be baptized. The next Saturday, Desdemona, seized with conflicting emotions, watched as the children's godfathers held them above the baptismal font at Assumption. As she entered the church, my grandmother had felt an intense pride. People crowded around, trying to get a look at her new baby, who had the miraculous power of turning even the oldest women into young mothers again. During the rite itself, Father Stylianopoulos clipped a lock of Milton's hair and dropped it into the water. He chrismed the sign of the cross on the baby's forehead. He submerged the infant under the water. But as Milton was cleansed of original sin, Desdemona remained cognizant of her iniquity. Silently, she repeated her vow never to have another child.

"Lina," she began a few days later, blushing.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Not nothing. Something. What?"

"I was wondering. How do you... if you don't want..." And she blurted it out: "How do you keep from getting pregnant?"

Lina gave a low laugh. "That's not something I have to worry about anymore."

"But do you know how? Is there a way?"