Lake Success

by Gary Shteyngart

  “No,” Seema said, “it’s actually—” She stopped. She wanted to tell Barry that the Shiva he imagined was nothing like the Shiva who actually existed. But maybe it was better for Barry to see for himself. “It’s actually a great idea.”

  “Well, I can still afford it,” Barry said. “That’s a joke.”

  “I know it is,” she said. “I can’t believe you did all that research on spaces for autistic kids.”

  “Gotta make up for thirteen years of shitty parenting,” Barry said. “Or nonparenting to be exact.”

  “Thank you, Barry. Shiva is going to love this. I mean, holy shit!”

  As soon as he hung up, the physical part of Barry returned. He wanted to shave his beard. He wanted to swim three miles in an hour. He wanted to walk up to Seema in the middle of the Sheep Meadow and sweep her off her feet. He knew, of course, that the last part couldn’t happen, but it was energizing to dream about something other than watches.

  Shiva’s sister was named Sally. Seema and Zameer had both come up with lists of names for their child-to-be, but the Tamil and Indian Muslim names did not generally overlap, except for a few like Ayesha (Hindu) and Aisha (Muslim), and so they decided to just go for something neutral and American. Sally Perkins was the first white friend Seema had ever had back in Ohio, and she had always been in love with that clean, native, two-syllable name. Sally had Zameer’s small stature and darting showman’s eyes, and even though she was five years Shiva’s junior, she took care of him and guided and protected him. Seema worried that having a brother with needs would take away some of Sally’s own childhood, but Sally and Shiva were impossible to pry apart, each taking turns being the other’s appendage, Sally modeling social behavior, Shiva taking her into his realm of numbers and letters and ticking clocks and all the other ritualized stuff that kept his world in order. He loved her more demonstrably than he loved his parents. When Sally was two and Shiva seven, he had taken her by the hand to his bouncy ball and hummed the “Hop, little bunnies, hop, hop, hop” song, even enunciating a few of the words, particularly the “hop, hop, hop.” Seema, who watched them with astonishment, thought, Fuck, I’m lucky.

  Sally was the one who brought Shiva up to the bimah. Shiva could say a few words, though it took a lot out of him, so he mostly used a new tablet computer with a speech program to communicate. Instead of intoning the actual Hebrew words, he hummed the haftarah beautifully; music, the piano in particular, was one of his gifts. He followed the notes on his device, expelling this strange but true melody into the thick, reformed air of the synagogue, and Seema’s parents wept while Shiva’s autistic classmates squirmed and stimmed.

  Barry was so nervous to see his son, he managed to be late for the service. He ran into the temple so fast that at first he didn’t notice the large bejeweled crowd, the collective sense of awe, nor the fact that he and the boy up at the bimah so resembled each other: the prominent bridges of their noses, their upturned, slightly feminine hips. Shiva was nearly his father’s height already, with room to outgrow him. He was wearing pretty much the same suit Barry was, a dark number with lots of ventilation, lots of butter-to-the-touch vicuña for both of their sensitivities. Shiva looked at his dad, smiled, looked away. Right away Barry could feel the boy’s gentleness, the gentleness of growing up with kinder parents. So there they were, him and Seema and Zameer and Novie and Sally and Shiva’s grandparents standing around him at the pulpit, three Hindus, a Jew, a Muslim, a Catholic, and the two lovely children which all of them but Barry had raised. What a New York scene this was, he thought, with unexpected pride. This was the country now. Archipelagos of normalcy amid a dry, angry heat.

  The Internet had only good things to say about Seema’s husband, and Barry supposed that Zameer was a better father to Shiva than he ever could be, but he was not jealous. He guessed, correctly, that the money Seema had pried away from him provided the best care and education for his son but had also kept his ex-wife shackled to a life not entirely her own. Sometimes he looked her up online, hoping she was “of counsel” at some nonprofit, but other than a brief stint at a prison reform project, his ex-wife’s CV remained bare. Barry felt sorry for wounding her and burdening her, but he was happy that she had a presence in her life more stable than his own. Maybe that was as close to love as he would ever get.

  After the humming of the haftarah, Shiva delivered the traditional Bar Mitzvah sermon, or rather it came through the William Shatner–like voice of his device, while Shiva synced his lips to the words. Barry had always assumed his son had thoughts and feelings, but that they would always be abstract responses to stimuli, a hurt little creature trying to make sense of an inexplicable world. A rabbit, as he used to call him. But once Shiva began to “speak” there was no mistaking him for anything but a deeply intelligent, if lucky and privileged, thirteen-year-old boy growing up in Manhattan.

  Once Barry got over the initial shock of his son’s fluent computerized voice, he assumed Shiva’s remarks would touch on the topic of trying to overcome his adversity. But Shiva never mentioned autism directly. He spoke of how much he loved his family. His sister was his best friend, and maybe that was “lame,” but he knew a lot of people who didn’t have best friends at all. (Everyone tried to quietly turn around and see the reaction of his autistic classmates.) His mother pushed him so hard that he used to get angry and throw fits, but where would he be without her? Certainly not up at this bimah, certainly not thinking about college in five years. College! Barry thought. Really? Could it be? He made a mental note to send a big chunk of cash to Princeton right away. And Novie had shared that burden with her. She was his family more than anyone could know. “I’m sorry I hit you when I was little,” the computerized William Shatner voice rang across the sanctuary, and Novie cried. He talked about Zameer trying to teach him to be funny and not take everything literally and how they had both nearly drowned on a father-and-son kayak trip up the Hudson. His comic timing was great and people laughed as if this was one of the best self-deprecating Bar Mitzvah sermons ever given, which it was. He’s enjoying himself, Barry thought. My son is enjoying becoming a man.

  Barry knew he did not deserve mention among the list of Shiva’s greats, but his son had saved him for last. “A lot of people can’t remember being three, but I can,” he said. “And back then, in my mind, I used to think of my father as the Bird Daddy because he had to fly away for work all the time. And every time he flew away I got angry and acted out. And every time he came back, I wanted to hug him, but I couldn’t because of how I am. And when I was a little older, Arturo and I used to chase pigeons around Madison Park, and I always thought one of them was my daddy but in pigeon form.” They all turned to Arturo sitting between his parents, looking thirteen and lightly mustached and terminally embarrassed by his friend. “And today the Bird Daddy flew back. And he’s given me the best day of my life.”

  Barry spent the rest of the day feeling both destroyed and ecstatic. He knew Shiva’s words had meant to be loving, to fill in a gap in their relationship, but he could not process his own abandonment of his son. But the words were there, and, if he let them, they could reverberate inside Barry for as long as he lived.

  * * *

  —

  AS PREDICTED, Shiva and his classmates were wild for the carriage rides across Central Park. The perfume-free spectrum-friendly rooms at the Mandarin filled up with his friends who wore color-coded badges that specified green if they wanted to interact with others, yellow if they just wanted to be with their friends, or red if they needed to be left alone entirely. Shiva, with his sister by his side, had set his to green all the time, even as Zameer came up to him at regular intervals to say, “Hey, Shiv, if you need a break, just tell me.”

  In the noisy room where all the neurotypicals had gathered, Barry overheard a girl Shiva’s age saying to her friend, “My health ed teacher says that when you’re stressed out you just want to have sex. I gues
s that’s why we do it, like, all the time.” And he wanted to go back to the rooms filled with his son’s quiet, shy, hand-flipping, virginal friends, not because their world was better or more innocent, but because he no longer knew what to do in this one.

  He shook everyone’s hand, allowed Seema’s still-vigorous-if-stooped father to thank him for the incredible party, got reintroduced to the formerly outlandish Tina or Lina from Brooklyn and her husband, a managing director at Goldman, and tried not to wilt beneath the half-mast glare of his ex-mother-in-law, who, gesturing to the views of Central Park in front of them, told him, “At least one thing in your life you did right.” And then Seema found him and put her arms around his waist. She had aged some but not much, the same smooth skin, the same three dimples, the same hazy eyes. He began to cry. “I didn’t know I was the Bird Daddy,” he whispered into her ear. “All this time he knew everything. You knew. I was the only one who didn’t know. And you made this beautiful kid. Without me.”

  “Are you kidding?” Seema said. “He is so you. Friendliest fucking autistic kid on the street. A total ham. A total half-Jewish ham. You saw him up there today.”

  “Were you serious about college? Should I call Princeton? What’s he into?”

  “Computers and music.”

  “Computers! Just like me when I was his age!”

  “I visited Oberlin.”

  “That the music school?”

  “It’s right by my parents. And we found out that there’s already a kid there who’s on the spectrum and nonverbal. And literally everyone on campus is a weirdo. Although some are obviously faking. I think it would be good for him to know the Midwest. Okay, you have to stop crying, Barry.” They turned away from everyone, toward the view of Central Park, the same view they had enjoyed on one of their last days as a couple, the election party of 2016.

  “So do you think he’ll just welcome me back into his life?” Barry asked.

  “What am I, his spokesperson?”

  “You’re so mean,” he said, smiling through his tears. “I’m so glad you haven’t changed.”

  “Is there some new meanie in your life?” she asked.

  “No, I’m done.”

  “Really?”

  “Not meant for love.”

  She rubbed his cheek. He could smell lotion and tuna tartare canapés on her fingers. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be. You know what I just realized? I didn’t bring Shiva a gift.”

  “This party cost, what, half a million?”

  “No, I mean a real gift. Something he can keep. I have an idea! Oh, God, it’s a good one.” He threw his arms around her. He could see their son walking toward them, smiling without making eye contact, probably excited by the thought that his parents could still share physical warmth.

  “Okay, dear,” she said. “Just please don’t start crying again. You’ll confuse him.”

  But he couldn’t help himself. Shiva’s color-coded badge was still green. If he wanted his son’s company, Barry could have it.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS a little past midnight. The autistic kids were exhausted, and Barry did not want to be stuck among the neurotypicals. The Town Car sped up the Taconic, Barry in the back. But he couldn’t sleep either. Not at all. His fingers were practicing their moves, the careful moves he would need for the rest of the night. The Armageddon of the city gave way to the sulfur glow of the suburbs, then surrendered to the full country night.

  Finally, he switched on the light in the former Watcharium where he retrieved the Universal Tri-Compax from the Ziploc bag and placed it on his desk. He snapped on the fluorescent desk lamp, then rolled the finger cots onto his fingers like condoms and pried open the back of the watch with a cheese knife.

  A city was before him. A city of silver and gold gears and wheels. Only this particular city had been frozen in time. The balance wheel was not spinning. The Tri-Compax needed to be disassembled, cleaned, and oiled and at least one of the jewels replaced. A monstrous task given the complexity of this particular watch, with its chronograph stopwatch, its day, date, and month and moon-phase display. To think that in 1948 a device of this complexity and elegance could be designed without the help of a single computer and then assembled not by robots in a giant Asian factory but by real Swiss men and women with real Swiss problems.

  And then Barry was visited by a new series of thoughts.

  Things could be fixed.

  Barry could fix them.

  Barry could fix his son’s watch.

  He made espresso lungo from a space-age machine in one of the kitchens. This was going to take the whole night. Or longer. Before he got rid of his watch collection, he had hired the best watchmaker in the city to give him lessons in watch repair. Leo was a fifty-something Athenian intellectual who had tried to convince Barry that the Greek gods were better, or at least more curious and interesting, than the main Judeo-Christian one, whom he saw as a collector of sorts, never happy with his last acquisition, always too busy to maintain the pieces he already owned. Leo had taught him quite a bit, but Barry had been too scared to try his hand at one of his half-a-million-dollar watches.

  He took a deep breath and began to work. Gaining confidence as he went along, Barry began to take apart the city inside the Tri-Compax. He took out the balance cock and dismantled the chronograph. He separated the base movement into two. There was dirt everywhere that he rubbed off with Rodico putty, handling each part with the care he had lavished upon Shiva when he was a newborn, back when he was worried that even burping him too hard might cause internal damage. The watch had been around for over sixty years, was almost a coeval of his dead father. The dirt made the gear train stick to the jewels, one of which needed to be replaced anyway. As Barry exhaled softly, he thought of all the people throughout time who were like him, like Jonah, like Shiva, lost in their Mappariums and Watchariums, stuck in front of their Commodore 64s, enjoying the soft grind of their own competence and curiosity. A terrible joy overtook him, and his hands began to shake. He put his tweezers down.

  A few weeks before Shiva’s Bar Mitzvah he had driven out to the Hamptons to visit Joey Goldblatt, the last remaining contact from his hedge-fund days, who was out on a work-release program after his latest misunderstanding with the government. Speeding down the Long Island Expressway, Barry spotted a sign for Lake Success and swerved his SUV across two lanes to get to the exit.

  So there it was. The object of his childhood dreams. There was the Lake Success Center with a Casual Male XL, a Red Mango, and a Victoria’s Secret. The strip mall looked dingy, its weird southwestern motif dated, the parking lot full of tired Honda CR-Vs. Only the new Shake Shack crammed full of Korean families gave any hint of the twenty-first century. He drove past the enormous Long Island Jewish Medical Center, which reminded him of his deceased father, and then around the quiet residential streets checking out Zillow on his cell phone. The houses were nice, but hardly the imperial domains of his early desires. Lots of basketball hoops and soccer nets, hydrangeas and hanging plants. But maybe this was what he always wanted. Just shades of middle-class garden-variety happiness and boredom, the stuff of half-forgotten American dreams. He pulled up before a split-level listed for just under 1.7 million dollars, the price of a small apartment in Manhattan. The modest house had a new roof and siding and a gunite pool in the back, along with a stack of patio chairs. There were children playing on the lawn, avoiding an erratic sprinkler, not his mythical triple-Duravit-sink children, but two, a boy and a girl, just like Shiva and the cute sister he had spotted in Seema’s e-mails, except neither of them appeared to be on the spectrum. Barry was mesmerized by the children, by the way they couldn’t get enough of their simple games—chasing and tackling each other while screaming some strange private phrase (“Goober town?”)—until an elderly Jewish-looking neighbor in jogging sweats knocked
on the passenger window. He shook away his reverie, smiled at her, started his engine, and left Lake Success behind.

  All the pieces of the Tri-Compax were now in plastic containers, waiting to be reassembled in the exact order they had been before he took them apart. There were easily several hundred of them. At first he was scared he would get it wrong, but then he rose to the challenge. This would be a test of his recall and his capacity to mind small, delicate things, some of them hardly thicker than a human hair. He worked for another three hours. When all the parts were sparkling clean and oiled, he began the task of trying to make the watch whole. Watchmakers were often advised to sit in front of a window with views of nature, as well as to play musical instruments and ride on horseback. Lacking either of the latter, Barry stared out the window at regular intervals.

  The Amtrak on his side and the freight train across the river no longer made their soothing honks because the banks had been flooded the last few years, just as the rising water had shut down New York’s subways, but barges still made their way down to the city, and sometimes Barry would look up from his work and see those immensities right under his nose, the captain of the tugboat visible on his bridge, almost within shouting distance. That was the beauty of the Hudson. It was a working river. And now Barry was a workingman. Back when he was a trader he loved tracking the world’s oil tankers on his Bloomberg using the BMAP function, but now he was seeing the real thing in real time, his sleepless eyes trailing the monumental vessel, his pink finger cots covered with oil.