Replica

by Alexia Sereti

 

With curly black hair, a strong nose, and the kind of eyewear that nineties dads wore uniformly, there he stands – a replica of my dear father.

 

They were roommates in their twenties, living together in New York when the rest of the family was bundled away in good old Jersey, safe and sound. They moved to the big city in search of something greater than just the stability Greece couldn’t offer. They were chasing ownership – each with a dream of their own business models. My father’s path was carpentry. But George, his was real estate.

 

At a family barbecue, George stands by the grill, comfortable in the familiar role of the caretaker, and tells me about the time he and my father picked up two flight attendants from their airplane back to Greece and escorted them to a village wedding. According to him, they made it a total of twenty minutes before the family successfully kicked them and their non-Greek dates out of the village for disgracing the wedding party. He tells me about the road trip they went on through the Greek country side, on route back to Athens, with these two strangers; his voice filled with pure nostalgia. I can’t help but hate that I deprived myself of these stories by avoiding him for the past eight years.

 

They stand the same way, with a silent confidence, a calmness. They both speak with a sense of purpose, like taking the time to formulate words just isn’t necessary in their world. But in all the time I spent avoiding him, I missed out on the opportunity of understanding how different they really are. He speaks with a quieter voice, like yelling would be a wasteful use of energy. He moves with slower purpose than my father did, as if time never quickens in pace. But most of all, the kind empathy that lived inside my father’s eye doesn’t seem to hold a permanent fixture within George. I think that may be why I’m able to have this conversation at all.

 

For the longest time, maybe even still today, the face of this man brought me pure terror. There was a man walking around, making a life for himself, with the face of my father, while the person I considered dearest to me was lying under St. John’s Cemetery, deep underneath the grassy fields of Queens.

 

I can’t help but look at him and smile, hands fidgeting somewhere behind my back. I can’t help but wait for him to tell me that he knows what I’m thinking, who I’m seeing. But he says nothing and doesn’t seem to recognize anything in what I’m feeling. Maybe that’s just his way of being polite or maybe I really am alone in what I’m feeling, and the only one who could truly see through my façade of bravery really is gone.