A WEEK OR so after the sauce delivery, Mother Nature decides that having inflicted one of her coldest winters ever on the East Coast, she needs to throw in a historic blizzard as well, so tonight I am at the store listening to radio forecasts of thirty-plus inches of snow, hurricane-strength winds and potentially an economic disaster for the city’s merchants. Even before the storm arrives the mayor cancels school the next day and calls out the National Guard. Residents are told to stay home at all costs, and judging by the sudden surge in customers wanting candles and bottled water, they’re planning to obey.
“Do you think you’ll open tomorrow?” more than one customer asks.
“If the roads are blocked, we can’t,” I reply, surprised at how anxious supposedly tough New Yorkers can get about weather. Spending the day locked up or out in the snow sounds like fun to me. But this storm promises to be different, if for no other reason than that I’ve never been the owner of a deli during a “cataclysmic weather event.” And there is another thing that gives me pause: the older people of the neighborhood who can barely get out of their apartments on a normal day and won’t be able to move around at all if the sidewalks are buried. Based on how much food they buy, I would guess that some of them have only enough in their cupboards to last a few days.
If not for the roads (and the bridges, which will definitely be closed tomorrow if the forecast holds, cutting off Staten Island from the rest of the city) I would find a way to make it to the store—for the neighborhood, but also for us, because I know now that Kay was right about the hazards of closing for even one day. When you close, bad things happen. You may not lose all your customers, but you might miss an important delivery, or your food might spoil, or the cat might get angry about not getting fed and pee all over the store. Plus, if you survive taking off a single day, you might be tempted to take off two in a row.
“No way,” says Kay when I tell her I’m willing to drive in. “Forget about it. No matter how much we need money, it not worth dying for.” Which is a pretty good indicator of how scary this storm is, that even my mother-in-law is counseling restraint.
There’s been a lot of sober reflection around here lately. No one has a formula for determining when to call it quits, but if they did I imagine it would be something like: you’ve made less money than you’ve spent for way too long (check); even if you were making money, you’d be so deeply in debt that it wouldn’t matter (check); not only is your business failing, but your house, which wasn’t threatened before you took on the business and which you vowed to protect under any circumstances, is starting to feel jeopardized as well, thanks to your decision to dip into the savings to pay the orange juice company (check); and, finally, you are miserable! (check).
That night we sit at the window and watch the storm, which, of course, is not only savagely destructive but mesmerizing in its way. Usually when you look at the Paks’ backyard you see a slag heap of spare refrigerator parts rusting amid dead leaves and flapping tarps, but tonight it looks like a miniature version of the Rockies—there’s Mount Frigidaire and the Compressor Range, the Luxaire Basin and Great Fan Belt National Park.
The other good thing about the blizzard is that it is so powerful, so enveloping and so fast at piling up snow that early on it forecloses even the possibility of driving, which means that we can all go to bed planning to wake up late. I feel bad for the old folks, but they’ll have to survive until at least tomorrow afternoon, which is when the most optimistic forecasts have the storm letting up.
However, in the middle of the night Gab apparently has a different idea from the rest of us. At four in the morning, without telling anyone, she sneaks out of bed and mummifies herself inside about eight layers of winter clothes, and then, hip-deep in wet, heavy snow, she thrashes and stumbles her way across two miles of snow-covered hills to the St. George ferry terminal. It’s not a totally out of character thing for her to do. Gab admits that she is the sort of person who “has to do, has to do whatever comes into my mind,” much like her never-say-die mother. Lately, however, she’s been trying to curb those tendencies, almost as if in the process of trying to match her mother’s tenacity and determination over the last few months she’s scared herself with how much like her she can be.
This morning, though, Gab is a shopkeeper possessed. After getting herself to the ferry terminal and crossing New York Harbor at sunrise, she finds that subway service has been canceled, which leaves her no option for getting to Brooklyn other than walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in a whiteout as fifty-mile-per-hour winds lash its exposed pedestrian walkway. For someone who has never been particularly adventurous in a physical way, it’s probably the most impulsive thing she’s ever done, but then again, how often do you have the Brooklyn Bridge all to yourself? Three hours later (five after she left the basement), she lights up the store’s funky tropical awning, and for the rest of the morning she is rewarded with the distinction of being the only store open anywhere in the neighborhood.
That one act seems to bring back a large number of customers, including, I would guess, many who’d been avoiding us simply because we’d rubbed them wrong. (Take your pick how: the siren in the night or the cold coffee? The price increases or the turned-off TV?) New York may be a hard and impersonal place, but people do actually want to like the people they give business to on a regular basis. Today, by showing commitment to the neighborhood, Gab goes a long way toward rebuilding that crucial relationship.
But there’s still a long way to go, and this is but one step. In a smaller place than New York they might give a business endless opportunities to get it right, because there’s less competition and something better might not come along. Here, a thousand other wannabes are ready to replace us.
JUST AS I’M thinking that Gab, who, unlike me or Kay, has never taken off even one minute from the store, is the one person in this family who’s indispensable, in March she gets a call from a friend at her old law firm, the one she quit because it was hollowing out her brain. The friend wants to know if Gab would be interested in a job at a big international bank selling off commercial jets in the bank’s midtown office. The friend’s husband, who works at the bank, is looking for someone with Gab’s qualifications and specifically asked about Gab.
When she tells me this I can’t help but laugh, because what could be more ridiculous than going from peddling Slim Jims and Nutrament to selling Boeings? And how could Gab possibly abandon us now, with the store in so much jeopardy? Not even Gab or her mother would try to work at a deli and a bank at once.
Quickly, I realize she’s not laughing with me: she’s going to apply for the job.
“But you said you’d never go back to corporate law,” I cry, suddenly panicked.
“I did?” replies Gab, who has the power to eliminate any traces of doubt in herself once she has settled on a course of action. “I don’t remember that.”
“You made me promise to incarcerate you in a mental hospital if you even considered it. Don’t you remember the long hours and meaningless work—the drudgery?”
Gab looks genuinely baffled. “Even if what you’re saying was true,” she says skeptically, “this job wouldn’t be like that.” She explains that it’s a contract position, which means they’d be paying her by the hour and therefore she could leave the office every day at five o’clock.
“Which leaves me time to get to the store and work the night shift!” she adds.
Oh God, I moan. Are all Korean women like this? Are they all unsatisfied merely holding down hard jobs while being dutiful daughters, wives and mothers? Do they all have to run extended-family boardinghouses, take classes in flower arranging, start a youth group at their church and master the art of traditional Korean cooking (based on vegan principles, of course) at the same time?
As we’re having this conversation I notice that Gab has taken out some of her dour old shoulder-padded jackets and knee-length gray skirts from the storage closet in Kay’s basement.
“Well, even i
f you don’t remember how miserable you were, I do. You spent seventeen hours a day in a windowless office reading contracts. At night you came home and ate a scoop of rice in a bowl of tap water. You slept all weekend and went right back to the office on Monday. Your appetite for life seemed to disappear.”
“Do you have any kind of evidence for that? Did you write any of that down? Because honestly, I’m having trouble remembering it that way.”
I feel like I’m trying to unbrainwash a zombie. Maybe I should sabotage her job application by calling up the bank after her interview to tell them that Gab owns a failing deli. Who would want to hire someone who can’t even run a convenience store?
“This is insane. You’re being just like your mother.”
Which causes Gab to stop unpacking her suits and sit down close to me—very, very close.
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” she whispers. “Turn down a potential job offer? In case you haven’t noticed, WE NEED MONEY.” She pauses. “Did you notice?”
“Of course.”
“Well, someone needs to do something about it. My student loans are about to kick in again. And if we’re ever going to move out of this basement, we need to stop waiting for the store to pay us back, because at this point I don’t know if it ever will.”
I stare at Gab and try not to look dumb. What about it, lazy bastard? What’s your plan?
In my defense, lately I have been trying to pull in more money, but so far not one of my magazine pitches has been accepted. Most of the time I’m not even getting rejections, just dead air. And meanwhile, the way things have been going at the Review, I’ll be lucky to keep getting my $3.65 an hour, or whatever it is George pays me. Starting tomorrow, I vow silently, I’m going to redouble my efforts!
Then Gab drops the bomb.
“I want children,” she says.
Again, I can’t help laughing, because the thought is so absurd. Children, now of all times? Could there be a worse idea? Of course not. Even Gab knows that.
“Okay, now I can say you’ve really lost it. This isn’t you talking. You’re driven but not insane. I’m the one with unrealistic tendencies. You’re pragmatic. I’m just going to wait—you’ll get your senses back in a couple of days.”
“No, I don’t think I will. Because yes, you’re right. I have lost it. Probably I lost it a long time ago … But we don’t have the luxury of waiting for things to get easier. This is how our lives are and probably how they’ll be be for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, I’m just getting older. So, yes, I want children.”
“That’s so … selfish of you” is all I can think to say.
Before Gab can answer, the door to our bedroom swings open and Kay strides past us toward the laundry room, where the Paks have not one but two extra refrigerators for storing food when relatives move in. Curious, I think. Is someone else coming?
Kay, sensing the tension, stops, puts down the grocery bags she’s carrying and asks if something is wrong.
“Did you tell your mother?” I ask, thinking Kay will put a halt to this nonsense. She’s not ready to manage the deli without Gab, is she? What about our personnel issues? What about Bienstock and the sales taxes?
“I’ve been invited to apply for a job,” admits Gab.
“Oh really?” says Kay. “How much they pay?”
Gab rolls her eyes. “Jeez, Oma, couldn’t you at least ask me which company it is first?”
“When you start?” says Kay, who doesn’t seem perturbed in the slightest.
“I have to be interviewed first. The job hasn’t been offered yet.”
“I have to start cooking,” Kay says, already planning a feast in her head to celebrate Gab’s new job. “What you want me to make?”
“Wait,” I say, interrupting. “Am I really the only one here who thinks this is a bad idea? The store is in crisis. How are we going to get by without Gab?” I look at Kay. “Aren’t you worried?”
“Worried?” she replies blankly, as if it’s a strange question. “Worried because why? I have you. And now Emo coming.”
“WHAT?” Gab and I both gasp. Emo is Kay’s older sister and lives in Los Angeles. She used to live with Kay; however, the last time we saw her was two years ago, when she and Kay got in an argument and Emo moved out.
“When?” I exclaim.
“She be here Friday. I talk to her yesterday. You go pick her up at airport,” she says, before disappearing into the laundry room with the food she’d brought down. As Gab and I stand there, now both struck dumb, I can hear her filling up the refrigerator and singing softly.
THE AROMA STARTS invading our bedroom an hour later. Kay had been to Hanyang, a Korean supermarket in Flushing, and brought home some of the family’s favorite dishes: pickled young radishes, salted squid, seasoned cuttlefish and vats of bean paste. When I first moved into the Paks’ house, I admit, I had a hard time with the food. Korean cuisine, which largely consists of vegetables like cucumbers and seaweed, with large components of fish and rice, is almost ridiculously healthy and flavorful, and Koreans tend to eat every meal as if a fast just ended, piling their plates with a wildly colorful assortment of food and stuffing themselves till no one can stand up straight. However, one occasionally has the suspicion that in order to protect their cuisine from being overexposed and watered down, Koreans decided to mask it behind some extremely challenging smells, like minced garlic and fermented soybean paste. Now, my enthusiasm for food that is exotic, flavorful and hopefully spicy enough to give you breath that can peel paint runs second to no one, but the tastes and smells of Korean cuisine are so powerful that they seem to permeate everything around them—like milk, if you store it in a refrigerator with Korean food, or me, if you store me in a basement near dried anchovies and pickled cabbage.
Eventually, though, I stopped noticing what Kay’s house or, occasionally, my own hair smelled like. Not only did I get used to it; it seemed as if my tendency to scrutinize and judge had gone on a much-needed hiatus. Korean daytime TV, for instance, looks no less dim-witted than the American version, but for some reason watching Ten Thousand Wons of Happiness, a popular game show, doesn’t depress me the way an hour of Pyramid does. Korean junk food looks plenty junky, but Choco Pies, one of Gab’s favorite snacks, don’t set off the snob siren the way an equivalent American snack like MoonPies (“Oh my God, you’re really going to eat that?”) would.
Koreans also have a different perspective on what Americans take to be the all-time classic symptom of loserdom: living with one’s parents. In America, what Gab and I are doing is considered unspeakably embarrassing. However, every time I watch Korean TV with Gab and Kay, I seem to see a sitcom or a drama featuring a domestic situation that looks scarily like our own, with a multigenerational household living too close together and tearing one another apart over some drama like a shared business. There’s no stigma. It’s just normal. Kay says that modernization has started to dilute the practice of multigenerational cohabitation somewhat, and of course coming to America introduces all kinds of challenges to traditional living arrangements. However, even after emigrating, Korean-American families tend to go on living the way we do because of the need to enlist family members in labor-intensive businesses like a deli. It’s not just that relatives make good auxiliary workers / indentured servants / child laborers; they’re also potentially available for household chores, freeing someone like Kay to focus more on business. In Kay’s home we’re constantly exchanging shifts at the last second, asking family members to fill in and trading favors like “You let me sleep an extra hour tomorrow morning, and I’ll do your laundry. Deal?” Living with coworkers provides invaluable flexibility. The house becomes an extension of the store, like a dormitory: you can sense that conveyor belt looping endlessly between the two, shuttling goods and people.
Of course, nothing could be more foreign to my own family, where personal space is guarded as vigilantly as international spheres of influence between rival nation-states. The rule against unannounc
ed arrivals at someone’s house, for example, is enforced as zealously as the Monroe Doctrine. After personal space comes peace and silence: you can share space with someone, but you have to contain yourself, which means not just keeping your personal noise level under control (no gum cracking or scratching, no breathing like a St. Bernard) but not being a “fidgeter” or a “yapper,” especially when someone else is engaged in the all but holy practice of reading. (Some families, when you get them together, play sports, watch TV or eat. When you get a group of Howes together, you get group reading, not unlike the Puritans and their favorite activity: group prayer.) In general, it’s all about control—of your body, your impulses, your emotions, just as Strunk and White advocated.
But perhaps we can change, even after we’ve allegedly grown up and become set in our ways. Before we moved in with the Paks, I was the kind of sleeper who would be kept miserably awake by someone’s whistling nose hair three doors down the hall. Now I sleep like a baby, whether Kay is vacuuming next to my head in the middle of the night or Edward is in the next room singing karaoke. Maybe it’s because I’m worn out by the store. Or maybe it’s because when lots of people are living together, someone is almost always awake, and it feels like they’re standing watch; at some point the brain can’t help but relax as a sort of pack instinct kicks in. It wouldn’t surprise me: the psychological effect of living with an extended family can be startlingly powerful, especially when the family is struggling together toward a common goal. It can suffocate not just your social life but your whole feeling of autonomy. At some point during the last year I realized that every facet of my life had become intertwined with Gab’s family: I had the same doctor, the same dentist, even the same haircutter, a Korean woman at the Staten Island Mall. Maybe moving out won’t be so easy after all. And now Gab’s got me worried that we can’t afford to anyway.
My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store Page 15