Super Sad True Love Story (35 page)

My parents were starving.

I walked into the kitchen and checked the nearly bare pantry—potatoes from the back garden, canned peppers, marinated mushrooms, four sliced pieces of moldy white bread, two rusted tins of some kind of Bulgarian cod-in-a-can. “This is terrible,” I said to them. “We have the jeeps here. Let me at least take you to Waldbaum’s.”

“No, no,” they shouted in unison.

“Sit down,” my father said. “There’s beet salad. There’s bread and mushrooms. You have brought Tagamet. What more do we need? We’re old people. Soon we will die and be forgotten.”

They knew exactly what to say. I had been kicked in the stomach, or so it seemed, for I was now clutching my relatively full belly, and every brand of concern coursed through my digestive tract.

“We’re going to the Waldbaum’s,” I said. I raised my hand in preparation for their weak protests. The decisive son speaks. “We’re not going to discuss this. You need food.”

We crammed into one jeep, the other serving as a lead escort, Palatino’s men flashing their weapons at a gang of miscreants crowded around what used to be the Friendly’s restaurant but was now apparently the headquarters of some local militia. Was this what Russia looked like after the Soviet Union collapsed? I tried, unsuccessfully, to see the country around me not just through my father’s eyes but through his
history
. I wanted to be a part of a meaningful cycle with him, a cycle other than birth and death.

While my mother carefully wrote out a list of supplies they needed, my father told me about a recent dream he had had. A few of the “Chinese swine” engineers at the laboratory where he used to work accuse him of releasing radiation into the air during his morning custodial rounds, he is about to be arrested, but in the end he is vindicated when two Russian women janitors show up from Vladivostok and pin the radiation leak on some Indians. “When I wake up, my lip is bleeding from fear,” my father said, his gray head still trembling from the memory.

“They say that dreams often have secret meanings,” I said.

“I know, I know,” he said, waving his hand in the air dismissively. “Psychology.”

I patted my father’s knee, wanting to impart comfort. He was wearing denims, old Reebok sneakers that I had bequeathed him, an Ocean Pacific T-shirt with a fading iron-on of some young southern-Californian surfers showing off their boogie boards (also from the Lenny Abramov teenage collection), along with plastic sunglasses covered by what looked like an oil slick. He was, in his own way, magnificent. The last American standing.

We pulled into the strip mall where the Waldbaum’s supermarket huddled next to a boarded-up nail salon and a former sushi place which now sold “
WATER FROM CLEAN PLACE
, 1
GALLON
= 4
YUAN, BRING YOUR OWN CAN
.” As the jeep pulled up directly to the Waldbaum’s door, my parents looked at me with great pride—here I was taking care of them, honoring them, a good son at last. I refrained from throwing myself around their necks in gratitude. Look at the happy family!

Inside the brown-and-cream-colored supermarket, the lights had been turned down to create an even sadder shopping environment than I had known in the heyday of Waldbaum’s, although Enya was still being piped through the sound system, warbling about the flow of the Orinoco and the cruelly phrased possibility of sailing away. I was also struck by a row of ancient photographs showing the walleyed, balding produce and deli managers of years past, a Westbury combination of striving Southeast Asians and Hispanics, under the fascistic slogan “If it’s good for you, it’s good for Waldbaum’s.”

My father took me to see the empty shelf where the Tagamet pills used to be stocked. “
Pozorno
” (“It is shameful”), he said. “No one care about the sick or the old anymore.”

My mother was standing in the baked-goods aisle, next to an old Italian woman, deep into an angry monologue about the Mix-n-Match butter-pound-cake and angel-food-cake combo, which was priced at an exorbitant eighteen yuan. “Let’s get the cakes, Mama,” I said, mindful of my mother’s sweet tooth. “I’m paying for everything.”

“No, Lyonitchka,” she said. “You have to save for your own future. And for Eunice’s, don’t forget. At least let’s look for the red-dot special.”

“Let’s see if there’s any fresh produce around,” I said. “You need to eat healthy. No artificial or spicy flavors. Otherwise, all the Tagamet in the world isn’t going to help Papa.”

But the fresh produce was in short supply; most of the good stuff had long been diverted to New York. We filled our carts with twenty-eight-ounce containers of cheese balls (a red-dot special, plus 20 percent off) and a lifetime supply of seltzer, which was effectively cheaper than the four-yuan “water from clean place” they were selling out of the sushi joint. I drove my cart up and down every aisle. The lobster cage (“Any Fresher and They’d Be Alive!”) was not only empty, but missing a glass side. My mother bought more mops and brooms in Household Supplies, and I got some decent whole-wheat bread out of the bakery and bought ten pounds of lean turkey breast for my father. “Use the fresh tomatoes from your garden to make a sandwich with the turkey breast and whole-wheat bread,” I instructed. “Mustard, not mayonnaise, because there’s less cholesterol.”

“Thank you,
sinotchek
” (“little son”), my father said.

“
Zabotishsia ty o nas
” (“You are taking care of us”), my mother said, tearing up a little as she stroked the head of a new mop.

I blushed and looked away, wanting their love, but also careful about not drawing too close to them, not wanting to be hurt again. Because where my parents are from, openness can also mean weakness, an invitation to pounce. Find yourself in their embrace and you might not find a way out.

I paid over three hundred yuan at the only working checkout counter, and helped my father load the bags into the jeep. As we were about to drive back to their house, a loud thump of an explosion echoed from the north. Palatino’s men pointed their guns at the perfectly blue sky. My father grabbed my mother and held her like a real man could. “Nigerians,” he said, pointing toward Suffolk County. “Don’t worry, Galya. I beat them on the basketball court, I’ll beat them now. I’ll kill them with my two hands.” He showed us the strong little hands that used to dunk balls into hoops on given Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“Why does everyone blame the Nigerians?” I blurted out. “How many Nigerians are there on this side of the ocean?”

My father laughed and reached up to stroke my hair. “Listen to our little liberal,” he said, with that familiar Fox-Ultra bombast in his voice. “Maybe he is a secular progressive too?” My mother joined in the laughter, shaking her head at my silliness. He came over and grabbed my head with two hands, then kissed me moistly on the forehead. “Are you?” he shouted in mock seriousness. “Are you a secular progressive, Lyon’ka?”

“Why don’t you ask Nettie Fine about it?” I said loudly and in English. “I haven’t heard a word from her. Even after the äppäräti started working again. Why don’t you ask your Rubenstein? He’s done so well by you, you’ve lost all your savings and pension and now you’re scared to walk past a Credit Pole. When he says ‘the boat is full’ he’s talking about you, you know.”

My father looked at me quizzically and chuckled. My mother said nothing. I cooled my emotions. What was the point? Underneath it all, my parents were scared. And I was scared for them. After a meager family dinner of turkey breast, beet salad, and cheese puffs, I spent a restless, sexless night huddled in the spotless downstairs bedroom, scented with apples, clean laundry, and every other manifestation of my mother’s close attention. I felt lonely and tried to teen and verbal Eunice, but she didn’t respond, which was odd. I GlobalTraced her progress throughout the day—as soon as I left, she had headed up to the Union Square Retail Corridor, then she continued to head up to the Upper West Side, and then her signal just disappeared. What on earth was she doing on the Upper West Side? Was she crazy enough to try to cross into Fort Lee over the George Washington Bridge and see her family? I became acutely worried for her and even thought of rustling up Palatino and heading back to the city.

But I couldn’t deny my parents a full visit. There they stood in the morning, waiting for me by the landing with the same worried, submissive smiles that had carried them through half a lifetime in America, staring at me as if no one and nothing else existed in the world. The Abramovs. Tired and old, romantically mismatched, filled to the brim with hatreds imported and native, patriots of a disappeared country, lovers of cleanliness and thrift, tepid breeders of a single child, owners of difficult and disloyal bodies (hands professionally scalded with industrial cleansers and gnarled up with carpal tunnel), monarchs of anxiety, princes of an unspeakably cruel realm, Mama and Papa, Papa and Mama,
na vsegda, na vsegda, na vsegda
, forever and ever and ever. No, I had not lost the capacity to care—incessantly, morbidly, instinctually, counterproductively—for the people who had made of me the disaster known as Lenny Abramov.

Who was I? A secular progressive? Perhaps. A liberal, whatever that even means anymore, maybe. But basically—at the end of the busted rainbow, at the end of the day, at the end of the empire—little more than my parents’ son.

HOW DO WE TELL LENNY?

FROM THE GLOBALTEENS ACCOUNT OF EUNICE PARK

OCTOBER 13

GOLDMANN-FOREVER
TO
EUNI-TARD:

Good morning, my sweet, sweet girl, my tender love, my life. Yesterday was so much fun, I can’t believe the weekend is upon us and I’ve got to surrender you to our little friend. I’m counting 52.3 hours until I see you again, and I don’t know what to do with myself! I’m about as complete without you as a leopard without his claws. I’m working on all the things you said too. My arms need to improve more than the rest of my body, they’re the hardest to fix in some ways, the depleted muscle tone, etc. And I’m sorry if we didn’t do enough of the good stuff. I have to pace myself for my heart, because genetically I’ve really been dealt a poor hand there. The Indians tell me that in the next two years I’m going to have my heart removed completely. Useless muscle. Idiotically designed. That’s this year’s big project at Post-Human Services, we’re going to teach the blood
exactly
where to go and how fast to go and then we’ll just let it do all the circulating. Call me heartless. Hahaha.

So Howard Shu (he says “hi” by the way) has been doing a lot of research and I think he’s hit upon something. We need to get your parents better credentialed, so they’re not just your average American immigrants with bad Credit. It’s hard to get Norwegian papers, but there’s a Chinese “Lao Wai” foreigner passport that gives you a lot of the same privileges, and you can even leave New York for six out of twelve months a year. He’s trying to qualify your father as essential personnel, because the podiatrist quota in NYC hasn’t been completely filled yet. The new IMF plan is very methodical about occupations. The problem is that in order to qualify your dad’s going to have to get a New York address, either in Manhattan or Brownstone Brooklyn, and the cheapest non-Triplex stuff in Carroll Gardens is going to go for about 750,000 yuan. So what I’m proposing is that I buy a place for your family, and if your dad ever makes enough money he can pay me back. We can get a student visa for Sally, and I can grandfather you in. So to speak. Ha ha. Anyway, it’s a good investment and I don’t mind doing it, because I love you. I know you hate it when Lenny reads to you, and I hate reading too, but there’s a great line by an old poet Walt Whitman: “Are you the New person drawn toward Me?” I used to think that all the time when I walked the streets of Manhattan, but I don’t think that anymore, because now I have you.

I wanted to bring something up and I feel like it’s not really any of my beeswax. I know you want your family safe, but in some ways, does it make sense to have your father here, so close to you and your sister? Maybe I’m old-school, but when you talk about him walking into the shower when Sally is around, or how you watched him drag your mother out of bed by her hair, well, I think some people would call that physical and psychological abuse. I know there are cultural factors involved, I just want you and your sister protected from a man who obviously can’t control his behavior, and should be under supervision and taking medication. The lack of boundaries is one thing, but the violence sounds like it contravenes even Chinese basic law, forget about whatever hippie-dippy Scandinavian shit the Norwegians have. I hope you’ll move into my place soon (or we can get a bigger place if you feel claustrophobic), and then I’ll make sure no one ever touches or hurts you again.

Okay, my little empress penguin, looks like I’ll be working through the weekend, more Staatling internal stuff, but every seventh minute I look up at the ceiling or down at the floor and picture your open, honest face and feel completely serene and completely in love.

EUNI-TARD
TO
EUNI-TARD:

I’m writing this for me. One day I want to look back at this day and make peace with what I’m about to do.

All my life has been about doubts. But there’s no room for them now. I know I’m too young to have to make this kind of decision, but this is how things are.

I miss Italy sometimes. I miss being a complete foreigner and having no ties to anyone. America might be gone completely soon, but I was never really an American. It was all pretending. I was always a Korean girl from a Korean family with a Korean way of doing things, and I’m proud of what that means. It means that, unlike so many people around me, I know who I am.

Prof Margaux in Assertiveness Class said, “You are allowed to be happy, Eunice.” What a stupid American idea. Every time I thought of killing myself in my dorm room I thought of what Prof Margaux said and just started howling with laughter. You’re ALLOWED to be happy. Ha! Lenny always quotes this guy Froid who was a psychiatrist who said that the best we can do is turn all our crazy misery, all our parents bullshit, into common unhappiness. Sign me up.

I wake up next to Joshie feeling that way. But also with a little thrill. We were doing brushstrokes with M. Cohen and I couldn’t believe the concentration on Joshie’s face. The way his lower lip was just hanging there like a little boy’s and he was breathing really carefully, like there was nothing more important in the world than brushstrokes. There’s something powerful in being able to let go and focus on something that’s completely outside yourself. I guess Joshie has had a lot of privilege in his life and he knows what to do with it.

And then he noticed I was looking at him, and he just smiled like a little kid and pulled his lip in and tried to look his age, which I don’t think he can anymore. And I thought, Okay, I’m going to leave Lenny and I’m going to spend my life waking up next to Joshie, getting older every day, while he gets younger. There’s something right about that. It’s like my punishment. Morning, afternoon, night, sex, dinner, shopping, whatever it is we’re doing, I don’t feel turned off by Joshie and I don’t feel the opposite. I just want to do brushstrokes with him and hear that even, even breathing. He has these old slippers that are perfectly arranged by his bed just so he can slip right into them first thing in the morning, but they’re too big for him. He waddles around like an old man in them. And that’s something I can fix. I can fix him. I’m so glad he can take criticism. First thing I HAVE to do is get him new slippers. I guess I’m like a lucky version of my mother with Joshie. Like Froid said, common unhappiness.

Lenny. Will he ever forgive me?

I feel like a recycling bin sometimes, with all these things passing through me from one person to another, love, hate, seduction, attraction, repulsion, all of it. I wish I were stronger and more secure in myself so that I could really spend my life with a guy like Lenny. Because he has a different kind of strength than Joshie. He has the strength of his sweet tuna arms. He has the strength of putting his nose in my hair and calling it home. He has the strength to cry when I go down on him. Who IS Lenny? Who DOES that? Who will ever open up to me like that again? No one. Because it’s too dangerous. Lenny is a dangerous man. Joshie is more powerful, but Lenny is much more dangerous.

All I wanted to do was have my parents take complete responsibility for how fucked up I am. I wanted them to admit that they did wrong. But that doesn’t matter to me now.

Common unhappiness, as the doctor said, but also common responsibility.

I can’t just be an abused little girl anymore. I have to be stronger than my father, stronger than Sally, stronger than Mommy.

I’m sorry, Lenny.

I love you.

EUNI-TARD
TO
GOLDMANN-FOREVER:

It sounds like you’re one busy bee, sweetheart. I’m so turned on when you work so hard, Joshie. There’s nothing sexier than a hardworking man, that’s how I was brought up, and that part of my parents I am NOT ashamed of. So many emotions are going through me right now. It’s not just gratitude for what you’ve done for my family, it is a deep, deep love. Am I the New person drawn toward You? Yes, I am, Joshie. I sometimes see men and women who are beautiful on the street, but they’re beautiful in such an obvious Media way. And you’re the real thing. Don’t worry about the sex, darling. I’m not some sex monster. Holding you in my arms, taking a shower with you, scrubbing you HARD with a loofah, picking out stuff to wear, cuddling on the couch, making those fat-free blueberry pancakes, those are the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done with anyone. Just being in the same room with you is arousing. I miss you so much. You do NOT have old man arms. You’re much stronger than Lenny, and you have such soft, gorgeous lips. All I need you to do is keep your neck in good shape, because you are going to be going down there a lot! Hahaha.

Re: my parents, I sometimes feel like I tell you too much. I know it’s my fault, I feel like I need to blab about them to everyone I love. Unloading about my life is like the only thing that keeps me from spending the day inside the refrigerator and adding to my FAT ass. I just wonder if I’m being fair to them and to you when I bring up what happened to me and Sally and my mom. There were good times too, you know. When I was in Tompkins Park right before the Rupture, my father asked me how I was. I know deep down inside he’s a good person, he’s just had a hard life is all and that makes me sad. Sometimes when I miss you, I feel sad the same way, like my whole life has been rushing toward you and I can’t wait for us to be together.

Ugh, I was just watching a stream of this Jamaican guy who was being deported from New York and he was crying and his whole family was in tears and he was telling his daughter that he’d be back and that it was best for them to stay in the city and be safe. I thought I was going to break down in tears too. Did I tell you I used to volunteer with trafficked Albanian women in Rome? I wish we didn’t have to deport anyone. And I can’t believe you said they’re going to clear out our co-op buildings. Lenny put so much money into this apartment and he’s got all these books. And what are they going to do with the old people? Where are they going to move them? They’ll die. Is there something you can do, sweetheart? Okay, Lenny’s coming back home right now. I can hear him huffing and puffing. I gotta run. Have a great weekend, Joshie. You’re all I think about, dream about. I trust you and need you so much. No one has ever been so wonderful to me.