Dogs With Bagels

by Maria Elena Sandovici

  “That does sound challenging,” I admit. “But… I guess the reason I want to do this is because I can really relate to what these people are going through. I’m a first generation immigrant myself. Of course, I came here as a child, and my parents took care of me, and I adjusted, as kids do. But I know how for grownups it’s so hard. I really admire these people for being able to leave behind their lives and take a leap. And I do know how hard it is for them. I might not have gone through that myself, but when we came here my mom spoke no English at all. It took her years to learn, and she was miserable, practically a captive. I wish there was a place like this for her to go to, but we didn’t know of anything, and we didn’t have any money. Which is why I think it’s so nice that you guys do this for free. I mean… Sorry, I guess I’m rambling.”

  “No, no. This is actually very interesting. You seem to have a strong personal reason to do this. And we are looking for people who are giving and passionate.”

  I feel myself blushing. Giving and passionate. It sounds a bit corny, but I like it.

  “Well, I’d say you pass,” Andrea says. “But of course, we’ll have to try you out first, put you into an actual classroom, and have one of our more experienced teachers observe you, before we can officially hire you.”

  “Hire? I thought this was a volunteer thing…I mean position.”

  Andrea laughs.

  “Oh, no. We pay our teachers. And our other employees too. And we give full time staff a full benefits package.”

  “Oh.” I’m confused. “I thought it was a non-profit organization.”

  “Yes, it is. Our students do not pay for their classes. But we have an endowment to pay our teaching, recruiting, and fund raising staff. Of course, our salaries are nothing like what you’d get in the corporate world. But it is a fabulous place to work.”

  She stands up, walks to her desk, and hands me a pile of colorful brochures.

  “I’ve put together some materials on our organization. And I will give you a brief tour of our state-of-the art classrooms. Then I’ll introduce you to some of the recruiters. They are the ones who help our students actually get to us. Without them, our classrooms would be empty.”

  “Do they ever go to women’s shelters, you know, like, for battered women?”

  Andrea thinks about it for a second.

  “You know, I’m not sure. But that would be a great idea. You can ask them yourself. Let me show you the classrooms first, and then we’ll call one of our teachers and schedule for her to observe your teaching demonstration.”

  The third appointment of the day is the hardest. I can feel my stomach contracting, and my knees trembling, as I stand on Greg’s doorstep. In my purse, in a small velvet box, is the engagement ring he gave me.

  30

  Easter

  In my mind, Easter will always be associated with the scent of the vinegar Mami mixes in her egg dye. There’s nothing pastel about Romanian Easter. Eggs come in bright colors, red being by far the most popular, and Mami’s favorite. Every few years, she sends me to one of the Romanian grocery stores in Queens to buy red dye. This red powder, combined with vinegar, could paint the whole world bright. I love to see the eggs soak in Mami’s viegar-dye concoction until the color deepens to a shade that’s not pink, not orange, but unapologetically, and unmistakably red.

  Mami positions the eggs in their cartons to dry. Once they cool down, we grease them with bacon to make them shiny. I doubt anyone in modern day Romania still does this, but I enjoy the ritual.

  As Mami likes to point out, Easter is the most important holiday of the year. Celebrating it is a big production. First, people fast for forty days (at least theoretically). And even those who don’t, like me, observe a strict vegan diet on Good Friday. Vinerea mare. After the fast comes a feast, the highlight of which is lamb.

  But first there’s midnight mass. Everybody congregates in front of the church, and at midnight they light candles and sing a song about Jesus rising from the dead. Tati told Alex and me how, in Romania, where churches are built in traditional cross-shaped Orthodox fashion, and do not have to share a block with a Korean laundry and other businesses, the entire congregation, with their candles aflame, would circle the church three times.

  Mami never goes to mass with us. It’s no secret that her dislike for the community outweighs her desire to go to church. Even on Easter. It’s Tati who takes Alex and me to midnight mass. Mami waits at home with an elaborate Easter meal, dyed eggs, gourmet sardines, stuffed grape leaves, olives, taramosalata from the Greek store, different types of feta, and then of course, roast lamb, crunchy, salty, yet so tender it falls off the bone, a crisp fresh spring salad, spinach pie, and sweet cheese pie with raisins.

  This year will be the same, yet different. Mami won’t be making the meal. We will, instead, after church, gather at Tati’s, to eat the lamb he made. Mami and I will dye the eggs at her new place, then Tati will pick us up, and take us to his house. Alex is home from school and sleeping at Tati’s, because, there’s no home for him to go back to. Tati will take Alex and me to church, as usual, and Mami, I guess, will wait until we return, watching the lamb (as if the roast lamb could run away, or get bored without an entertaining companion). After church, we will eat our feast at Tati’s. Then he will drive Mami and me back to Mami’s, where I will spend the night. Only my crazy Romanian parents could come up with such a complicated arrangement.

  Once I finally get to see Mami’s new place, I understand why everything is different this year: There’s no room for a family dinner here. There is no table, and there are no chairs.

  My mother occupies one sparsely furnished room. It’s beautiful and very Zen, but far from practical. There’s nothing here, except hardwood floors, bookshelves, and a big white bed. ‘Very comfortable,’ Mami says, and after sitting on it, I agree. A long white curtain can separate the room into bedroom and kitchen areas, and there is a similar curtain by the only window. The kitchen consists of a white cupboard built into the wall, a sink, stove, and fridge too close together, and then, across from these appliances, a chrome workstation topped with a wooden carving board. That’s it.

  Mami has classical music on. Vanilla scented candles are burning on the windowsill. She has already opened a bottle of red. She seems content, relaxed. But it’s more than that. There are some surprising changes about her: Mami’s had her hair cut, dyed, and styled. It’s still shoulder-length, and still wavy, but there are textured layers in front. Her color is the same rich chestnut, but the white strands are gone. Instead, her stylist added subtle (read: expensive) highlights and lowlights. It looks completely natural, hardly noticeable to the untrained eye. She glows. I’m shocked. Mami sports the hair of a Park Avenue princess, the pricey, well groomed, yet understated style of the upper crust of the Upper East Side. It’s not surprising that she wanted it, nor that it suits her. But never in a million years did I imagine she would splurge on such a thing.

  She’s wearing a simple white T-shirt. Of course, only Mami could pull off dying Easter eggs and then tending to the lamb (whatever that entails) in an immaculate white T-shirt!

  But the real shocker are her designer jeans. I have to look twice, and cannot help asking. She laughs. She blushes. “I treat myself,” she says. “You like?”

  What’s gotten into Mami? Designer jeans, a salon style, a new apartment, and then some. I could pick out that scent out of a thousand. Mami is unmistakably wearing my parfum secret. In her hot jeans, and her alluring scent, she is walking around her overheated apartment barefoot, displaying ten beautiful toes with nails all perfectly groomed and painted red, bright red, like the Easter eggs, but even shinier.

  They look good, but they just don’t fit. There’s something sensual about bright red varnish, but doesn’t she know it’s all wrong? Doesn’t she know that upper class ladies on the Upper East Side, ladies with subtle highlights and even subtler lowlights, would rather go for natural and understated? Doesn’t she know how many shades of pale p
ink there are in this city? Could she not have noticed? She sees these women every day. She talks to them, smiles at them, and sells them gloves for their perfectly manicured hands. She must know their look inside out. Maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she’s simply having fun. I guess it’s about time she did. But what gave, I wonder.

  Yet it’s my own fingers, unadorned, with slightly bitten nails, that steal the show this evening. Mami grabs my hand before even offering me a glass of wine.

  “Where’s ring, my sweetie?”

  “The ring is gone, Mami. I gave it back to Greg.”

  “So wedding is off?” she asks. She jumps with joy, hugs me, and hurries to pour wine to celebrate.

  I’m not sure her display of excitement is appropriate. I feel relieved at having broken the engagement. A weight has been lifted. Still, I feel guilty, sad, and more than a little ashamed.

  “Tati doesn’t know yet,” I say. The thought of telling him gives me nightmares. What will he think of me? “I think I have to tell him…tonight. Will you help me tell him, Mami?”

  Mami raises her eyebrows, then goes on pouring our wine.

  “Help you? No. I don’t help you. You are grown woman. You tell your Tati yourself. Now, let’s drink toast to freedom!”

  I clink glasses with her, but take no pleasure in the wine. I feel betrayed.

  “Don’t worry,” Mami says. “He won’t be upset. You think he want you to get married? No. He wouldn’t say anything, but I know he hope you wouldn’t get married.”

  Her words are little consolation. I can’t imagine Tati being pleased. Even if he didn’t want me to marry Greg, he’ll disapprove of the way I acted. And he’ll be right. He usually is.

  “Don’t pout, L,” Mami says. “You are grown woman, remember? You old enough to live on your own, old enough to get engaged, old enough to realize it’s not good to get married, old enough to break engagement. You are an adult. You owe nobody an explanation. Why be afraid to tell your father? Now, telling that boy, that must have been difficult. That took guts.”

  She raises her glass, and once again we toast. I smile a vague smile. I know Tati will not feel the same.

  *

  The greased eggs are waiting on the counter. L is sulking into her wine. Victor and Alex arrive. Maria shows Alex around. He seems indifferent as ever. She shouldn’t have expected anything else, but still, it hurts.

  Victor, on the other hand, is full of compliments on her apartment, on her appearance, on the wine. He brought her flowers. Tulips. Her favorite. They break her heart. As she arranges them in a vase, she almost wants to weep. Of course, she knows, she’s being too dramatic. She’s a little too touchy today, too sensitive to even the slightest possibility of pain. It’s the excitement of it all: her children seeing her new place for the first time, her seeing Victor, which even now that they are friends, still unnerves her. Not to mention the prospect of going back to his place, where she spent her crazy night of passion with him. And she’ll have to act normal, like nothing ever happened. She couldn’t sleep all night thinking of it. To make matters worse, this morning she got her period.

  Now she’s completely miserable, a wreck of nerves and sadness. Not even wearing her new jeans makes her feel better, not even her outrageously expensive hairstyle. Everything hurts, the slightest inconvenience annoys her, and the futility of Victor’s desire makes her want to weep. There is desire in his eyes tonight. He still looks at her like that, after all these years, now that it’s too late for the two of them. It’s too sad for words. She has to remind herself that she didn’t get her hair done for him, but rather as a treat to herself, and that she hasn’t bought those crazily priced jeans for him either, but rather so she can feel young and fun again, and take some pleasure in her own appearance. She’s not trying to attract him at all. They’re friends now, and it’s wonderful. Any spark of desire is nothing but an accident. And that’s ok. Yet tonight she feels vulnerable and sad. Tonight she’d love to let him put his arms around her, to feel protected, safe, and maybe loved. But she knows that’s the dream of a foolish girl who doesn’t want to acknowledge, after all this time, who Victor really is, a girl who built him up into a romantic hero. She’s no longer that girl. She’s a grown woman and she’s had enough experience to recognize people for who they are. Victor is a good man. Kind, generous, and wonderful in many ways. But not a man whose shoulder one could cry on. He’ll make a dependable friend. But he’ll never be emotionally available as a lover. And in his heart of hearts he’ll never forgive her betrayal. After all, can she blame him?

  She sighs, and rinses the last of the wine glasses. They’re all waiting for her. Thinking probably that she’s obsessive compulsive for not just leaving the dishes in the sink. But they have no idea how badly she needs a few minutes away from them, how she craves a little aloneness, the comfort of warm water on her hands. The wine glasses look pretty. She loves good crystal. She smiles. Soon enough she’ll be a crazy old lady who thinks of objects as her friends. In a few years she’ll probably be talking to her wine glasses!

  With Alex carrying the dyed eggs in a wicker basket, and appropriately rolling his eyes at this unwelcome chore, they finally head for Victor’s apartment. She relishes in the thought that she’ll be left alone there, that they will go to church and leave her by herself. She wishes they’d just hand her the keys and go. But no, they have to come upstairs, they have to bring the eggs, they have to keep chatting like they always do, and in the midst of it all she has to deal with the anxiety of being back at Victor’s, has to pretend nothing is going on, that she’s not thinking of their night together, months ago. She has to act like the tornado of emotions blowing through her is not there. Now how does one do that?

  She’s only been here once before, on Thanksgiving, for her guilt-ridden night of passion with her husband. She doesn’t even remember the place. She was all too consumed that night, first with Victor, then with disappearing as quietly as possible.

  His apartment, to her, is foreign. The other woman’s territory, not her own, the silent witness to Monica’s years of intimacy with Victor. Maria is a trespasser, a stray prowler who fled before dawn. To the other woman, the décor of Victor’s life must be as familiar and comforting as her own. The apartment surely holds vestiges of her role in Victor’s life. Her lingering scent on the couch, some personal effects in the bathroom, an accent or decoration she might have picked, a plant, maybe, she used to water.

  As Victor turns the key in the lock, Maria thanks God that the lobby is dark, so her husband and children can’t see her blush. She sticks her hands in her pockets so nobody can see them trembling. She feels weak. And it’s not just her period, though the cramps and the dizziness don’t help. Of all possible days, why did her fucking period have to come today? Isn’t it bad enough that she has to visit her estranged husband, and pretend, in front of her children, not to have had wild passionate sex with him all over his apartment?

  As she enters Victor’s place, she wonders if she should pretend never to have been here before. Would it be tactful, or would it be ridiculous? Would Victor be relieved, offended, or amused? After all, she doesn’t recognize the place. She doesn’t have a general sense of it, doesn’t feel like she’s really visited. And yet he once took her home and fucked her up against the wall, and on the couch, and again and again in the bedroom. Desire courses through her, like a jolt of electricity, and she hates herself for it, hates Victor, hates this damn apartment, hates the images she can’t help recalling. She’s revolted at thinking in such vulgar terms. But then again, wasn’t it vulgar, her experience here? Wasn’t it primitive in some sense, raw? And didn’t she like it that way?

  Victor helps her out of her coat.

  “You already know the place, but I can show you around if you like.” She blushes. So he isn’t going to pretend that it never happened.

  “Actually…I…don’t really remember where anything is,” she says, thankful that he’s busy hanging up her coat and not really l
ooking at her. She realizes that she’s doing nothing but embarrassing herself by admitting to her sex-induced amnesia. But Victor seems unfazed. Is he trying to be a gentleman, or has he really forgotten the nature of her previous visit? She bites her lip so hard it hurts.

  “I’ll show you around.” His voice is warm, but she can’t detect the note of tenderness she longs for. “Would you like a glass of wine? Kids, wine?”

  Her heart sinks. He’s treating them all the same. He’s just being friendly.

  She sits on the couch, next to Lili. Her eyes wander around the apartment, and despite herself she looks for traces of the other woman. It’s a painful exercise, and rather fruitless. The objects in the room offer no clues. They seem as impenetrable as Victor. Poker faces all around. He could have bought all these things himself. They are tasteful enough. And they fit well together.

  “I can’t tell him,” Lili whispers, as soon as Victor disappears into the kitchen. She looks at Lili, and sees the sadness and worry on her little girl’s face. How selfish of her to sit here, obsessing about Victor’s love life, when next to her, L is in such obvious distress.

  “Of course you can,” she whispers back, and reaches over to smooth the hair out of her daughter’s face. Lili keeps fidgeting, rearranging her position on the couch. “Just try to sit still, take a few deep breaths, then just say it.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Victor asks, handing each a glass of wine.

  “I’m not marrying Greg anymore.”

  L’s face is lobster red. Her eyes glaze over. Maria hopes she’s not going to cry.

  “You’re not?” Victor’s voice betrays no emotion.

  “What did he do?” Alex sounds ready to pounce on poor Greg.

  Lili looks down. She’s blinking fast. The corners of her mouth are twitching.