Golden Country

by Jennifer Gilmore

  Not enough gelatin, Miriam said to herself, trying to remain calm as she attempted to patch up the fish. Scooping what had remained in the mold, she looked to fill in the eye and then will the tail into being with a knife as if she were grafting skin. But when she was done, the grafted salmon was a different consistency than the rest of the body. Somehow Miriam managed to stop herself from running upstairs and throwing herself on her bed to weep.

  She placed a pitted black olive in the gorged eye socket, and that was all right. It looks kind of cute, Miriam thought, tilting her head. “Don’t you?” she said to the salmon mousse. As for the tail, she had thought she’d fixed it with some swirls of her own making until David came in, beaded with water. He took one look at the mousse and said, “What happened to that poor old fish?”

  The stress of the whole day became more than Miriam could bear, and she burst into tears and ran upstairs. She flung her novels, dictionaries, and papers off the bed and threw herself facedown on the spread. She wept for what felt like her whole life: for her mother’s migraines, that low voice out of the darkness that never let her make any noise, the voice that always sent her away; her father’s sad, fallen face, his scratched-up leather valise she’d forever think he carried; the way she would always have to fight her husband, the way he would never just smile at her and tell her, Okay, my love, as her father always had. And she cried for the horrible things her mother-in-law had said at her wedding, her wedding, of which, in the two years since, she could not even remember one moment of but was happy for the way she’d been allowed to forget it because remembering it would make her even more miserable. That would have saddened her father, Miriam knew, that he had worked so hard for a wedding she could not remember, though the fact that Irving Berlin had shown up, on account of his association with Seymour, would be constant cause for celebration. As she cried, harder now, Miriam thought of that crippled, eyeless salmon, how it had looked up at her as if to ask, How could you have taken this from me? My tail! How will I ever get upstream to spawn without it?

  Miriam could hear her husband call up to her from below. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  She pictured him, both hands on the smooth wooden banister, looking up the empty stairwell. But she was not there, she was here, in the bedroom. Who walks across the threshold in her wedding dress alone? thought Miriam. I do, she thought. If David did not come up to check on her by the time she counted to ten, she would know for certain that he would never care for her in the way she needed.

  Twenty minutes later, a hiccupping, red-faced Miriam Bloom shakily made her way down the stairs and wandered into the kitchen, where David was running his index finger through the salmon.

  “What’s wrong, Miri?” He smiled at her. “Don’t get so upset—it’s just Thanksgiving. The holidays are always like this.”

  The holidays. He spoke as if they were a couple of goyim stirring mulled wine, trimming a tree, and hanging mistletoe and felt stockings. Watching him poke her salmon, she couldn’t stop herself from shuddering. “What are you doing?” she asked, her anger bringing her out of her sadness.

  “It’s good,” David said.

  Miriam shook her head and went over to the fish. Fortunately, he had taken only from the already damaged tail. “Really?” she asked, knowing that she had to rely on him for the tasting.

  “Well done,” he said.

  “Please.” Miriam put her hand up. “Please, David,” she said, “don’t eat any more before the guests arrive, okay?”

  “You mean our parents,” he said, getting the Brie and Jarlsberg out of the fridge.

  “And Frances and Vladimir,” she said, as if this validated all her concerns.

  Miriam looked at David as he turned away from the refrigerator, a cheese in each hand. Didn’t he see her? she wondered. If she’d so much as stubbed her toe, her father would have come running for her. It seemed he had come from anywhere when she was hurt or needing. Sugar, he’d tell her. Here I am. Why had she thought it would be this way with all men? Miriam was too old to be reduced to liquid from a stubbed toe, yet still she felt often like a vulnerable little girl. Why couldn’t her husband see this? See her deconstructed and unmasked.

  “Not one more thing, David,” she said sternly. “There really won’t be enough. Okay?” she asked. “Are you listening?”

  By two o’clock everyone was seated in the living room and well into the hors d’oeuvres. Miriam smiled as she bent toward Frances to offer her some salmon mousse garnished with the fresh dill, a long and lovely sprig of bright green cross-hatching she had picked from David’s garden along with some daisies, while he vacuumed. In one swift move, Frances took the eye, olive and all, and plopped the large amount on a square of black bread.

  Inadvertently, Miriam sucked in her breath.

  Frances laughed and put the whole thing in her mouth, looking sideways at Vladimir, who she knew hated it when she ate this way. Never enough, he’d tell her. Like a camp survivor, he had said once, and she had slapped him. As she heaped on the salmon, Frances thought of that chopped liver swan she’d swiped on the neck all those years ago, on the day Solomon became the Terrier. Terrier. Still she missed him, though when he died, two months before he was to be released from prison, Frances hadn’t had contact with him for years. She missed him far more than she missed her sister, though she did often wonder where Pauline had gone and what had become of her adorable nephew, Wesley. But she willed herself not to think of such things. Pauline was all dead and buried to her now. Frances looked over at Joseph and smiled. Still she remembered him as a young man who pressed a nickel in her hand to rent the oven from the baker on South Fifth Street.

  As Miriam bent toward Vladimir with her platter in one hand, napkins stamped with her initials—MBB—in the other, he shook his head. “None for me, my dear,” he said, looking squarely at Frances.

  Joseph laughed. “It’s okay, Vlad.” He winked at Frances. “The ladies love it when Frances gets bigger. Eat up, Franny!” It was true, there was always a spike in sales when Frances was seen as a little on the plump side. Women related to her and, when she was at her heaviest moments, they must have felt a little bit above her. Like so many things that had to do with the popularity of Essoil, how this translated into sales was puzzling to Joseph.

  Esther giggled and moved closer to her husband. She put her hand high on his thigh.

  Just then, Sarah got up and wandered to the mantel, where David stood watching the guests move about the living room. “A martini for your mother, darling?” she asked him. She looked down at her silk blouse and brushed away invisible crumbs from her breast. She twisted her scarf so that the knot was at the side of her throat. David imagined that she would untie it and that her head would fall off.

  “It’s a little early, don’t you think?” He looked at his watch. He had purposely put out spiked cider and red wine, which he knew his mother wouldn’t drink. Esther, Joseph, and Frances drank seltzer, and Vladimir sipped slowly at his Chianti.

  Sarah glared at her son and then shrugged as she pitched a handful of cashews from the crystal finger bowls on the mantel into her mouth. “How about a martini, darling?” she said, as if she had not asked before.

  “Mom!” David whispered.

  Sarah looked at him blankly. “I need a pillow,” she said. She turned toward Seymour. “Where’s my pillow?”

  “Son.” Seymour stood up quickly to preempt his wife.

  Jesus Christ, thought David. When did he start calling me this?

  “Son, the place looks terrific.” He held his glass of cider in the air. “A toast,” he said. “To David and Miriam. May they have many more happy memories in this lovely home.”

  David couldn’t even crack a smile. He could not tolerate the way his father pretended that he had always been the man with a hand on David’s shoulder, guiding him through the world. Because he had not. He most certainly had not.

  Sarah had wandered into the other room and sat sulking at the dining room
table, set with full service for eight. The Wedgwood china, rimmed in silver, and the Orrefors water and wineglasses shone even through the dim, filtered light.

  Esther nudged Joseph, as if to say, What will she do now? but Joseph steeled himself against his wife.

  “Hear, hear,” he said, holding up his seltzer.

  They all sipped their drinks. Sarah fingered the snapdragon and statice, the last of the blooming flowers, which David had cut this morning for a centerpiece.

  Joseph could see Sarah through the archway. Had it been two years since they had stayed together at the lake? What a week that had been, he thought now. Esther had been a crazy person, sneaking around the guesthouse like a common thief and reporting on the terrible state of it, strewn with clothes and curlers, the stench of stale liquor. He remembered Sarah’s startled face when she looked up at Esther from the flower beds. And he had felt so sorry for Sarah, shaking her way up on water skis that afternoon Seymour had nearly killed her.

  “So,” Esther began. She had told Miriam she would be bringing up conversation topics. What should we discuss? her mother had asked. As “Dear Maggie” said, she had told Miriam, it is always nice to start the conversation with something cultural, something that everyone can talk about on an equal playing field. Theater isn’t really appropriate, do you think? They’re all such snobs anyway, she told her. “Has anyone read any good books lately?” Esther asked the room cheerfully.

  Vladimir exhaled, and Frances patted his leg, knowing her husband was relieved Esther had not brought up anything about television. Everywhere they went—parties, launch events, restaurants—people always accosted her husband about television once they realized who he was. What’s your favorite program? they’d ask him brightly. For how many years had people asked him what he thought of the previous night’s guest on Arthur Godfrey? What did you think of last night’s Hawaiian Eye? Rawhide?

  Frances was always terrified it would come out that Vladimir never watched television. Sarnoff had told him time and again, Do not say such a thing in public, Vladimir, not to anyone. Can you imagine the backlash? Who would have thought that the very person who invented television never watched it? Vladimir hated television. They—the people of the world, the networks, the powers that be, his own wife—had ruined his baby, and he didn’t want to be a part of it. Had he had children, he told Frances over and over again, he never would have let them watch it.

  Frances twitched slightly at the thought of children. She had never gotten over the fact that she and Vladimir had not made something together, miraculous proof of them, memory of them, the very future of them.

  “Has anyone read that boy Philip Roth?” Frances asked.

  Esther nodded and pointed a finger as if to mark her place in the conversation while she raced to finish chewing. Miriam looked skyward. She had already heard it all: Esther had reported an entire evening of the book discussion at the synagogue.

  “Yes,” she said. “I certainly have. What do you think?”

  Miriam set the salmon down on the coffee table and sat back on the couch in between her parents. Books. No one would have read what she’d been reading—the latest had been Augusto Monterroso and Juan Goytisolo—and this frustrated her, the gulf between her parents and herself. Then it struck Miriam, here was the man who had invented television. And here, next to her, was her father, who had invented the first two-in-one cleaning product ever. Miriam envied the time when they were coming up in the world—it seemed to her one could have done anything then. Yes, it had been hard, but the possibilities! She looked over at David. What was there left to invent? What would David do that his own father had not done?

  Nothing, Miriam thought. What was the point? She couldn’t even make a proper salmon mousse. And if she did get it right, just once, she couldn’t even taste the damn thing. And here she spent her life translating, misrepresenting other people’s words in her haste, she thought now. There was nothing else to be done, she thought.

  “I think it’s terrific,” Frances said. “He’s a fabulous writer, and he deserved that big fancy award.”

  Esther wriggled toward the edge of the couch. “Well, I think it’s preposterous,” she said. “Why read such a book by someone who, forget he’s a Jew, but someone who portrays any people in that sort of negative light? It’s downright insulting.”

  “Esther, please,” Frances said. “How can you say such a narrow-minded thing? I think—”

  Esther sat upright and looked side to side abruptly. “Narrow-minded?” she interrupted Frances. “Narrow-minded?”

  Frances ignored her. “‘Dear Maggie’ loves the book.” She gave Esther a knowing nod. “What do you think of that?” That wasn’t entirely true—Maggie had merely responded to a comment a reader made about the downfall of literature today by saying that, though old values might be lost, perhaps this was not so terrible a thing.

  Joseph cleared his throat and took a sip of seltzer.

  “I think ‘Dear Maggie’ should stick to etiquette is what I think,” Esther said. “And I think it a bit strange of you to think it’s so fantastic for American Jews, after all we’ve been through, to be presented in such a disgusting way. Why else do you think the rest of America has embraced it so? That Roth sure gave them something to think about, didn’t he?”

  Frances waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.

  “Phooey, Esther,” she said. “We haven’t been through anything. We were here, after all.”

  Joseph cleared his throat.

  “Meaning what?” Esther said.

  “What did you do, what did any of us do, when all those people were dying in Europe?” Frances asked the room.

  “We didn’t know,” Esther said. She looked nervously over at her husband. “We just didn’t know, Frances.”

  “We knew. We just pretended not to,” Frances said.

  “When zhey sent that ship back from Cuba, I knew,” Joseph said. “And zhat night zhey looted all the stores. Zhe night that boy shot that German in Paris. I knew then too.”

  “I remember,” Esther said.

  “Yes,” Vladimir said. “Me too. But I knew long before that.”

  Seymour looked into the dining room, where Sarah sat, oblivious to them all. “We knew, we didn’t know. It doesn’t make a difference now. We all know how it ended up,” he said.

  “And for your information, Frances,” said Esther, “once it came to light”—she nodded in Seymour’s direction—“I started a very important fund.”

  “I’m sure your money was extremely useful,” Frances said.

  “So,” David said, moving away from the mantel.

  Esther crossed her arms and slammed back into the couch. “Well, you find my money useful. You don’t seem to have a problem taking my husband’s, now do you?” she said to Frances under her breath.

  Joseph grabbed her leg. “Enough,” he hissed.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” Sarah said from the dining room. “Bloody fucking hell.” She stood up and opened the doors that led out onto the deck. They all watched her head out the door and sit on the wrought-iron patio chair that David had shipped in from Czechoslovakia.

  I refuse to follow her, Miriam thought, instead bouncing up and heading around again with the salmon mousse. This time, she was pleased to note, everyone in the living room tried it. Esther peered over her rye bread as she munched, signaling that it was not as good as hers but that it would pass muster nonetheless.

  “Who needs a refill?” David asked, holding a bottle of wine and a bottle of seltzer. He was grateful his mother was not there to plead for a drink.

  Miriam felt a wave of nausea as she lifted the cheesecloth from the half-cooked turkey to baste it. What is that? she thought, gripping her belly and looking from side to side as if she’d heard a sound.

  As he leaned to pick up the demolished cheese tray, David also felt his stomach rising in his throat. How much have I drunk? he thought. They’d been seated for only an hour or so. He couldn’t have had too mu
ch. David looked over at his father and saw a grimace on Seymour’s willfully smiling face. Then he saw Frances bend toward the floor.

  “I’m not well,” she said.

  Vladimir rolled his eyes. “Maybe you shouldn’t have eaten so much,” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you, Fran?” He shook his head. “Like an animal.”

  “No, really.” Frances stood up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “There’s one around the corner there.” David pointed toward the guest bathroom.

  “I need one too!” Esther said suddenly. “I’m going to be sick!”

  David’s stomach roiled, a million butterflies flapping their powdered wings. And then a cramp bit into his side. “Upstairs and to the left,” he said. He dreaded the thought of his mother-in-law in his bathroom. He imagined her picking up and examining a pubic hair.

  Both women stood up and ran, Frances waddling around the corner and Esther hitting the stairs.

  Miriam came out of the kitchen, not, as David had once fantasized, with the proud look of a woman who had cooked the perfect bird but with the wounded face of a little girl sent home by the school nurse. “I don’t feel good, David,” she said. Her face was a pallid shade of gray.

  “Me either,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  The sound of retching came from the bathrooms, one quite close, the other more distant, as if an echo of the first.

  Vladimir, Seymour, and Joseph all stood at the same time and, knocking into one another, ran toward the deck, where they leaned over the railing and vomited.

  “Do you think it was the fish?” Miriam asked her husband.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Was it sitting out long?” He grabbed his stomach as if this would keep what he’d eaten inside.