by Laura Furman
I pull my hand free of his and look around to see what’s available, but at that moment my mother walks up, and so we stay put. Her lipstick has rubbed away, and she’s begun to look weary.
“Having a nice time?” I ask her.
“It’s lovely. Cressida’s very smart.”
My father straightens his back, lifts his chin.
“She knows her own mind,” my mother continues, ignoring or unaware that he’s peeved. “That’s unusual in someone so young.”
“Knows it?” my father says crisply. “Or thinks she knows it? And how could you decide which without being the expert yourself?”
My mother lifts one shoulder. She turns slightly, putting herself in quarter profile to us. The room is warm, and she plucks her caftan away from her chest several times.
“We’ve been talking,” he tells her, “about regret.”
She waits.
“And which is worse, guilt or humiliation. Which is it for you?”
“Sorry, Dan,” she says, “I’m not biting,” and she heads off without a pause, without even a glance back at us.
I don’t look at him, but I can feel him bristling. I’m in awe of her rules of nonengagement. She’s so detached and consistent. And yet not entirely avoidant, not as avoidant as I expected. Is this new, or does my memory misrecord her, so that each time she surprises me a little? She stayed at the B&B. Rode with us in the car. Sat with us for the ceremony. She returns and returns, as true and indifferent as the moon.
“What chicken shit,” he says.
The teenage girls who were passing trays earlier have disappeared, but one of them left a platter of aram sandwich spirals on a table, and I say, “Look, let’s grab some of those.”
“I was just making conversation,” he grumbles.
“You were baiting her. It was obnoxious.”
He presses his lips together and looks away as I load several sandwiches onto a small plate. “You know I’m right,” I say. “Now come on,” and I hold out the food.
He frowns and picks up a piece. “What is it?”
“Just eat it,” I say, and he takes a bite, and the whole thing promptly unrolls, releasing a few strips of turkey, a sodden length of lettuce, and a blob of tomato, all of which land on his suit jacket.
“For Christ’s sake,” he exclaims, brushing at the mess and creating several trails of mayo on his lapel. “Damn it. Look at me.”
I set the plate on the table and grab a napkin. As I dab, I attempt to make consoling noises, which just escalate his anger, and he cries, “Fuck!” loud enough so that the people closest to us fall silent. “Fuck,” he yells again, “fuck,” and now it’s the whole room, silent until the silence itself becomes the objectionable sound and people begin to talk again.
My father stalks away, and I shield my face with my hand, mortified. Why didn’t I head him off before he tried to provoke her? Or better yet, why didn’t I walk away when she did? I feel someone touch my shoulder and look up to find Peter at my side, frowning, his cheeks ghosted with the kiss marks of well-wishers.
He says, “God, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry.”
“We didn’t want you to get stuck with him tonight.”
“Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol haleilot?” I ask, the first of the four questions posed on Passover—“Why is this night different from all other nights?”—and he bursts out laughing.
“Wait,” I say, “she’s not Jewish, is she? Cressida?”
“You can’t believe I remember it?”
“It’s been a few decades.”
“I’ve been to the odd seder over the years,” he tells me, and then we say, simultaneously, “Very odd,” as if Dan were operating us like a puppeteer from wherever his pique took him.
“We’re so glad you’re here,” he says, and I think I’m not losing a brother, he’s losing a personal pronoun. This is a sour little thought, but I can’t help myself.
“We’re glad to be here,” I say. “You know that.”
My father sits on a folding chair directly in front of the gazebo where the ceremony took place, the set of his shoulders telling a story of boundless indignation. My mother stands against the wall, alone with her sketchpad, her pencil moving quickly over its surface. For a while I mill around, and then I join her and see that she’s drawing not people but flowers. “Aren’t the lantana pretty?” she says, but after another stroke or two she closes the sketchpad.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“No, I’d rather talk.” She smiles at me. “I want you to know that I have regrets.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, I want to say this. I have regrets, but only one about leaving your father.”
“I know,” I say. “You regret the message it sent me and Peter about the impermanence of love.”
She looks puzzled.
“No?”
“No.”
“That’s what you told me on my wedding day. What’s your one regret?”
“How interesting,” she says. “I suppose that was what I felt, for a long time.” She reaches up and touches her earlobe, a nervous habit I remember from long ago.
“And now?”
She takes a deep breath. “Now I regret that you ended up in a caretaker role. I regret,” she says, looking deeply into my eyes, “that because of my choice to leave him, that role was available for you to take.”
I’m surprised by this—shocked, actually; I never knew she felt this way and can’t believe she is saying so—but while all kinds of responses crowd my mind, the one I speak sounds hollow and is, in certain ways, beside the point. I say, “He isn’t that bad. He’s lived a good life.”
And she says, “What about you?”
My entire body warms under the heat of her regard. What about me, and why ask now? For years we’ve been so careful, my mother and I, around the great disappointment that is my circumscribed life, always in concert in our efforts to keep the identity of the draftsman—or, rather, the draftsmen—out of sight. Shall I tell her about the tiny pleasure of tending my herb garden, about the excessive thanks I get from the colleagues to whom I make small gifts of dried thyme? Shall I tell her about the relief I feel now that the “introductions” I am sometimes offered to unattached men have devolved from awkward dinner parties to quick e-mails? Shall I tell her about the unexpected delight of a good TV show, especially a drama that unfolds over many episodes and encourages the blocking out of an entire evening each week for three or even six months? Or shall I tell her that my father’s piss smells like raw meat?
The look on her face is classic Joanie, an unlikely mix of impassive and caring. I shrug, deciding to stay quiet—if you could call such inertia a decision—and she raises her eyebrows ever so slightly.
Just then there’s a chiming sound from the far side of the room, and I turn to see Peter and Cressida in front of a table bearing a magnificent four-tiered wedding cake. Cressida has a knife in one hand and a wineglass in the other. “Hello,” she calls out, and then, louder, “Hello,” her voice a good-size bellow that for some reason pleases me deeply. I step closer to them.
“First,” she says, “we want to thank you all for being here. And second, as far as this thing on the table behind us goes, did you really think I was going to let my mother bake oatmeal cookies?”
Everyone laughs and applauds, and then there are toasts, and speeches, and finally the cake is wheeled away to be sliced and served. When I finally look back over my shoulder, my mother is gone. My father is still seated, but he is no longer the only one; chairs have been pulled this way and that, into small and large circles, into pairs. His shoulders are curved now, his head is down.
A passing girl offers me a piece of wedding cake. I lift the plate to my face and breathe in the sugary sweetness, then spot my mother near the back of the room. I approach her, extending the plate on my palm when I get close and lifting it high.
She smiles a slightly puzzled smile. “That’s s
omething. What is that? I’ve forgotten.”
My father would be cackling by now. I lower the plate but keep it extended. “Wedding cake. We can share it.”
She raises her palm, mimicking the way I held the plate. “No, it’s something from Stanford. That year.”
“ ‘Your gâteau.’ ”
“That’s right, ‘Your gâteau.’ That was so silly.” She smiles again, but after a moment a sober look comes over her face and she says, “You know, I came close to leaving him that year—I thought about it constantly. I think I would have if it hadn’t been for that boy, that friend of yours, remember? From around the corner?”
I shake my head.
“You don’t remember?”
I’m thinking: Then? Then you thought of leaving? That early? This is the kind of information that derails entire histories—the family equivalent of moving the start date of the Vietnam War back a decade, say, thereby throwing off your memory of everything that happened before and since. “Remember who?” I say.
“That boy. Your friend.”
“A boy would’ve been a friend of Peter’s.”
“No, he was yours. And his mother had left his father, and I felt so sorry for him, such a forlorn, lost child. All I could think was, I can’t do that to my kids. It took me three years to figure out that if I wasn’t doing it to you, then I could do it.”
I nod. This is more than she’s said to me on the subject in thirty-five years, and I don’t really want to hear about it, not now. I don’t feel like listening; earlier, I didn’t feel like talking. Is this what I do with my parents? Want what I can’t have and then once I can have it, stop wanting it?
She reopens her sketchpad. “I should get them as they’re saying good-bye,” she says, and I look over and see Peter and Cressida at the door, hugging their guests.
Across the room is my father, looking at me. It’s long past time for me to begin the process of restoring him to himself. I start toward him, and once he sees I’m finally coming he looks away, like a timid girl at a school dance, afraid to jinx the approach of a suitor.
Miroslav Penkov
East of the West
IT TAKES ME thirty years, and the loss of those I love, to finally arrive in Beograd. Now I’m pacing outside my cousin’s apartment, flowers in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other, rehearsing the simple question I want to ask her. A moment ago, a Serbian cabdriver spat on me and I take time to wipe the spot on my shirt. I count to eleven.
Vera, I repeat once more in my head, will you marry me?
I first met Vera in the summer of 1970, when I was six. At that time my folks and I lived on the Bulgarian side of the river, in the village of Bulgarsko Selo, while she and her folks made their home on the other bank, in Srbsko. A long time ago these two villages had been one—that of Staro Selo—but after the great wars Bulgaria had lost land and that land had been given to the Serbs. The river, splitting the village in two hamlets, had served as a boundary—what lay east of the river stayed in Bulgaria and what lay west belonged to Serbia.
Because of the unusual predicament the two villages were in, our people had managed to secure permission from both countries to hold, once every five years, a major reunion, called the sbor. This was done officially so we wouldn’t forget our roots. In reality, though, the reunion was just another excuse for everyone to eat lots of grilled meat and drink lots of rakia. A man had to eat until he felt sick from eating and he had to drink until he no longer cared if he felt sick from eating. The summer of 1970, the reunion was going to be in Srbsko, which meant we had to cross the river first.
This is how we cross: Booming noise and balls of smoke above the water. Mihalaky is coming down the river on his boat. The boat is glorious. Not a boat really, but a raft with a motor. Mihalaky has taken the seat of an old Moskvich, the Russian car with the engine of a tank, and he has nailed that seat to the floor of the raft and upholstered the seat with goat skin. Hair out. Black and white spots, with brown. He sits on his throne, calm, terrible. He sucks on a pipe with an ebony mouthpiece and his long white hair flows behind him like a flag.
On the banks are our people. Waiting. My father is holding a white lamb under one arm and on his shoulder he is balancing a demijohn of grape rakia. His shining eyes are fixed on the boat. He licks his lips. Beside him rests a wooden cask, stuffed with white cheese. My uncle is sitting on the cask, counting Bulgarian money.
“I hope they have deutsche marks to sell,” he says.
“They always do,” my father tells him.
My mother is behind them, holding two sacks. One is full of terlitsi—booties she has been knitting for some months, gifts for our folks on the other side. The second sack is zipped up and I can’t see what’s inside, but I know. Flasks of rose oil, lipstick, and mascara. She will sell them or trade them for other kinds of perfumes or lipsticks or mascara. Next to her is my sister, Elitsa, pressing to her chest a small teddy bear stuffed with money. She’s been saving. She wants to buy jeans.
“Levi’s,” she says. “Like the rock star.”
My sister knows a lot about the West.
I’m standing between Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma is wearing her most beautiful costume—a traditional dress she got from her own grandma, which she will one day give to my sister. Motley-patterned apron, white hemp shirt, embroidery. On her ears, her most precious ornament—the silver earrings.
Grandpa is twisting his mustache.
“The little bastard,” he’s saying, “he better pay now. He better.”
He is referring to his cousin, Uncle Radko, who owes him money on account of a football bet. Uncle Radko had taken his sheep by the cliffs, where the river narrowed, and seeing Grandpa herding his animals on the opposite bluff, shouted, I bet your Bulgars will lose in London, and Grandpa shouted back, You wanna put some money on it? And that’s how the bet was made, thirty years ago.
There are nearly a hundred of us on the bank and it takes Mihalaky a day to get us all across the river. No customs—the men pay some money to the guards and all is good. When the last person sets his foot in Srbsko, the moon is bright in the sky and the air smells of grilled pork and foaming wine.
Eating, drinking, dancing. All night long. In the morning everyone has passed out in the meadow. There are only two souls not drunk or sleeping. One of them is me, and the other one, going through the pockets of my folks, is my cousin Vera.
Two things I found remarkable about my cousin: her jeans and her sneakers. Aside from that, she was a scrawny girl—a pale, round face and fragile shoulders with skin peeling from the sun. Her hair was long, I think, or was it my sister’s hair that grew down to her waist? I forget. But I do recall the first thing that my cousin ever said to me:
“Let go of my hair,” she said, “or I’ll punch you in the mouth.”
I didn’t let go because I had to stop her from stealing, so, as promised, she punched me. Only she wasn’t very accurate and her fist landed on my nose, crushing it like a plain biscuit. I spent the rest of the sbor with tape on my face, sneezing blood, and now I am forever marked with an ugly snoot. Which is why everyone, except my mother, calls me Nose.
Five summers slipped by. I went to school in the village and in the afternoons I helped Father with the fields. Father drove an MTZ-50, a tractor made in Minsk. He’d put me on his lap and make me hold the steering wheel and the steering wheel would shake and twitch in my hands, as the tractor plowed diagonally, leaving terribly distorted lines behind.
“My arms hurt,” I’d say. “This wheel is too hard.”
“Nose,” Father would say, “quit whining. You’re not holding a wheel. You’re holding Life by the throat. So get your shit together and learn how to choke the bastard, because the bastard already knows how to choke you.”
Mother worked as a teacher in the school. This was awkward for me, because I could never call her “Mother” in class and because she always knew if I’d done my homework or not. But I had access to her files and could
steal exams and sell them to the kids for cash.
The year of the new sbor, 1975, our geography teacher retired and Mother found herself teaching his classes as well. This gave me more exams to sell and I made good money. I had a goal in mind. I went to my sister, Elitsa, having first rubbed my eyes hard so they would appear filled with tears, and with my most humble and vulnerable voice I asked her, “How much for your jeans?”
“Nose,” she said, “I love you, but I’ll wear these jeans until the day I die.”
I tried to look heartbreaking, but she didn’t budge. Instead, she advised me:
“Ask cousin Vera for a pair. You’ll pay her at the sbor.” Then from a jar in her nightstand Elitsa took out a ten-lev bill and stuffed it in my pocket. “Get some nice ones,” she said.
Two months before it was time for the reunion I went to the river. I yelled until a boy showed up and I asked him to call my cousin. She came an hour later.
“What do you want, Nose?”
“Levi’s,” I yelled.
“You better have the money,” she yelled back.
Mihalaky came in smoke and roar. And with him came the West. My cousin Vera stepped out of the boat and everything on her screamed, We live better than you, we have more stuff, stuff you can’t have and never will. She wore white leather shoes with a little flower on them, which she explained was called an Adidas. She had jeans. And her shirt said things in English.
“What does it say?”
“The name of a music group. They have this song that goes ‘smooook na dar voooto.’ You heard it?”
“Of course I have.” But she knew better.
After lunch, the grown-ups danced around the fire, then played drunk soccer. Elitsa was absent for most of the time, and when she finally returned, her lips were burning red and her eyes shone like I’d never seen them before. She pulled me aside and whispered in my ear:
“Promise not to tell.” Then she pointed at a dark-haired boy from Srbsko, skinny and with a long neck, who was just joining the soccer game. “Boban and I kissed in the forest. It was so great,” she said, and her voice flickered. She nudged me in the ribs and stuck a finger at cousin Vera, who sat by the fire, yawning and raking the embers up with a stick.