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.