My New American Life

by Francine Prose

  Thanksgiving dinner was at five, and at three a van full of Mexican guys in baseball caps arrived with a foil-wrapped turkey and plastic tubs of mashed potatoes.

  “Microwave?” said one of them.

  “I can do that,” Lula said.

  Mister Stanley seemed dismayed. Perhaps Don had led him to expect handsome unemployed actors.

  He said, “I’ll bet Don helped those guys with immigration.”

  One of the Mexicans gave Lula a page of printed directions.

  “Microwave,” he said.

  Mister Stanley sighed.

  “Don’t worry,” Lula said. “This will be great.”

  Unwrapped, the bird looked gelatinous. No way this buzzard could be cooked from within by agitated atoms. Lula put it in the oven, and, just as she’d seen on TV, took it out early so it could drink back its own juices.

  Don showed up at five fifteen. The woman with him was very pretty, a few years older than Lula. Don introduced her as Something Something, the sharpest lawyer who’d worked for his firm in years, maybe the sharpest ever.

  “Tell me your name again,” said Mister Stanley. “I’m getting old and deaf.”

  “Untrue, Stan.” Don glared at him.

  “Savitra Dasgupta,” the woman said. The ends of her beautifully cut black hair brushed the shoulders of the pleated man’s shirt she wore, tucked into pressed jeans. Lula felt sluttish and frumpy, a bread dumpling neatly sliced by the knife-edge of Savitra’s pleats. Lula had gravy stains on her skirt, and she hadn’t even really cooked.

  The guests stalled in the front hall. Mister Stanley was supposed to ask them in, but that must have been Ginger’s role. Mister Stanley should have hired someone else, someone unlike Lula, someone with the domestic talent to make him and his son a real home. Lula saw their pretend home through Savitra’s eyes, just as she’d seen it through Alvo’s. It was amazing how fast you got used to things and stopped seeing them at all. Where was Alvo spending Thanksgiving? Eating turkey and cranberry sauce? More likely, bellied up to a bar in the Bronx with his homies and ESPN and a keg of homemade raki.

  Lula studied Savitra, taking lessons in the art of assuming a posture so regal that by the time they drifted toward the living room, where Lula had set out salami and cheese and sliced apples already edged with brown, Lula and Savitra had swapped places, so that Savitra was the hostess, and Lula the anxious guest. Lula hated these girl-on-girl dominance games, especially now when her hands were tied, because she was not about to repay Don for the miracles he’d worked on her behalf by being bitchy to his new girlfriend.

  Savitra gazed at the cheese and wilted fruit.

  “How autumnal,” she said.

  Like an expensive brooch pinned to the edge of Ginger’s sofa, Savitra sparkled as she told Mister Stanley about her rise to the top of her class at Georgetown and the cases she’d worked on at Don’s firm. Savitra subtly conveyed the fact that she had turned down big corporate money to “give back” to the country that had provided her family with a chance for a better life. Don beamed as if Savitra were his own prodigious child. And indeed he treated her like a delicate, moody girl. Like Abigail, in fact. He kept asking, Was she too hot? Too cold? Was everything okay?

  Mister Stanley poured the drinks. Wine for Lula and Savitra, cold black coffee for Zeke. Scotch for himself and for Don.

  “A light one, please,” said Don, whose hasty glance at Lula was the only sign he gave of remembering their lunch.

  Mister Stanley asked Savitra where her family came from.

  “Great Neck,” she said curtly.

  Don said, “Savitra’s grandfather is from Bangladesh. Her family owned a textile plant.”

  Savitra said, “My great-grandfather made silk for Christian Dior.” It took Lula a few seconds to understand the conspiratorial smirk Savitra flashed in her direction. As a fellow immigrant, Lula was marginally less white than Don and Mister Stanley.

  “I like your shirt,” Savitra told Zeke. Zeke was charmed, as were the two men. As was everyone but Lula.

  “Dog Breath?” Zeke read aloud, looking down as if to see what his shirt said. “Ever heard of them?”

  “No,” Savitra said. “But I hope you’ll play their music for me sometime.”

  “Any interesting new cases?” Mister Stanley asked Don.

  “Why spoil our dinner?” said Don. “Same psychotic freaks in the White House. Same al-Qaeda maniacs. Same innocent civilians trapped in the middle.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” said Mister Stanley.

  Don said, “But listen. Our brilliant Savitra may have found a loophole that could crack open one of our Guantánamo cases.”

  Lula could hardly bear it! Don’s girlfriend was not only pretty and sexy but a legal genius. Couldn’t Lula just be happy for Don and Savitra and the Guantánamo detainee?

  Savitra said, “Don’s the brilliant one.”

  Don said, “And Savitra obviously has a mind of her own.”

  Savitra said, “Don’s the one who could wind up in Gitmo.”

  “If I do, Savitra has promised to bring me samosas,” Don said.

  The two lovebirds nestled on the couch. Zeke walked behind the sofa and mimed gagging so only his father and Lula could see. Lula asked Zeke to come help her in the kitchen.

  “Open the oven,” she told him.

  “Awesome turkey,” said Zeke.

  “Big strong boy,” Lula said. “Bring this to the table. Make everybody sit.”

  Zeke picked up the platter with a weightlifter’s grunt. Lula scurried in and out the dining room with bowls of mashed potatoes and a basket of rolls she’d made from tubes of dough. It had been fun to watch through the oven door as the gummy blobs swelled into perfect crosshatched grenades.

  “Can I help?” asked Savitra.

  “Sit,” said Lula, which no one had done, no matter how many times Zeke told them. Lula had gone to great trouble to create an attractive holiday table. Organic beeswax candles from The Good Earth, Ginger’s best china. She’d even ironed a tablecloth.

  “Didn’t I tell you, Stan?” said Don. “Aren’t those caterers terrific?”

  Savitra said, “Shouldn’t we call Zeke back? He seems to have given up on us and disappeared.”

  Mister Stanley frowned at Lula. Wasn’t Zeke her job?

  Zeke made them suffer a long, tense wait before they heard his footsteps.

  “Welcome back,” Savitra said.

  “Everybody begin,” said Lula. “Start eating. I forgot to make the gravy. It will take two minutes.”

  Savitra called after her, “Are you sure I can’t help?”

  “No,” said Lula. “Please.” But Savitra, with that mind of her own, followed Lula into the kitchen, where she posed like a temple goddess with one hip thrust out and one elbow against the refrigerator door. Making gravy was tricky enough without Savitra saying, “May I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure.” Lula was glad she could focus on whisking flour into the drippings.

  Savitra took a sip of wine. “Did you ever fuck Don?”

  “Of course not!” Lula said. How pleasant it was to tell the truth, and how false it sounded. “He’s my lawyer.”

  Savitra said, “So Don claimed. I just needed a reality check. We’d been dating for two weeks before he bothered informing me he was married and had a daughter. This guy’s a human rights hero, but when it comes to women—”

  “He’s separated, I think.”

  “Married, actually. Legally married. I know what legal is.”

  “Don’s a good guy,” said Lula.

  Savitra said, “I hear you’re a writer.”

  “Look,” said Lula. “The gravy’s ready.”

  When Lula and Savitra emerged from the kitchen to find that the others had started eating, they exchanged a surprisingly friendly and rich communication. Both were thinking that an American girl would have been pissed at the rude American men. But Lula and Savitra came from older cultures that assumed men ate first,
after having been waited on, like royalty or babies. They knew better than to expect a hollow show of chivalry from the greedy pigs, though the look that passed between them said, We’re American now. The greedy pigs should have waited.

  Mister Stanley was telling a story about a guy at his job who rode a motorized scooter to work and everyone in the office thought it was really cool, but last week the guy fell off his Segway and broke his collarbone in two places. Zeke and Don hated Mister Stanley’s story, each for a different reason. As Lula and Savitra filled their plates, the three men watched.

  “Savitra! Is everything all right?” said Don.

  “Lovely,” Savitra said, gently squeezing Don’s arm.

  “How’s business, Stan?” asked Don. “Who would have thought that my childhood pal would rise to become a Master of the Universe?”

  Mister Stanley shrugged. Seeing Savitra touch Don had so deflated his spirits that he seemed to have lost the will to ever speak again.

  Finally he said, “Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if the market goes the way of that hotshot’s Segway. This housing bubble, the derivatives, the subprime lending . . .” Everyone watched his pale fingers glide along the table like a scooter and plummet off the edge.

  “Are you joking?” asked Don.

  “I don’t have your sense of humor,” said Mister Stanley. “I never did.”

  “Please,” said Don. “Don’t—”

  Mister Stanley said, “Does the word Enron mean anything to anyone here? Are our memories that short? If I were Joe Average, I’d be cashing in my pension and buying gold and stashing it in the mattress.”

  Lula looked around to see how the others were reacting. Having had some experience with economic meltdown, Lula wanted to tell them: Don’t think it can’t happen here. But Don and Savitra were looking at Mister Stanley as blankly as if he’d just suggested that they might be in danger of running out of mashed potatoes. Nor did their expressions change much when Mister Stanley said, “What we saw with Enron was just the tip of the iceberg. Risk management is a fancy term for what the lemmings do when they hold hands and jump off a cliff.”

  “Lemmings don’t hold hands, Dad,” said Zeke. “Lemmings don’t have hands.”

  “You sound like Abigail,” Don told Zeke, then glanced worriedly at Savitra to see how she’d responded to his mentioning his daughter.

  Savitra asked Zeke what his favorite subject was.

  “Subject?”

  “In school,” Savitra said.

  “None of them,” said Zeke.

  Don said, “Did I tell you, Stan, I was back in Guantánamo last week? The UN guys called off their inspection visit because they’re not being allowed to talk to the detainees one-on-one. Oh, and the hunger strike’s started up again. The strikers are being force-fed with gastric and nasal feeding tubes. They’re reusing the same tube for every guy up and down the line, strapping them into these horrible chairs so they can’t vomit up their food—”

  Savitra said, “My God, Don! Reusable nasal feeding tubes? We’re eating Thanksgiving dinner. You need to give yourself a break—”

  “A break,” said Don. “Only the prisoners don’t get a break. And those poor kids fighting our wars.”

  Mister Stanley shook his head. “We do have a lot to be thankful for.”

  “Name one thing,” said Zeke.

  “That we’re not in prison,” Mister Stanley said. “That you’re not in the army.”

  “Not yet,” said Zeke.

  “When we were your age, there was a draft,” said Mister Stanley.

  “You told me that,” singsonged Zeke. “And you burned your draft cards and went out onto the street and stormed the Pentagon and—”

  Don said, “All over the country, American families are giving thanks. As we should, for the privilege of living in this country. We should be offering up our prayers of gratitude for our precious freedoms. It’s not about the cranberry sauce. Nor is it about what the indigenous people taught us to grow before we slaughtered them all.”

  “Not in the Northeast, Don,” said Mister Stanley. “Not so much slaughter went on here.”

  “Stupid fucking wrong-way Columbus thought they were Indians,” Zeke said. He caught himself, horrified to have said “Indians” in Savitra’s presence.

  “Marvelous turkey,” said Savitra.

  “Thank you,” said Lula.

  Don said, “I really will have to thank the guy who turned me on to those caterers.”

  Don and Savitra left early.

  Afterward, Zeke and Mister Stanley helped Lula clean up. Mister Stanley said, “Poor Don! Betsy was a piece of work, but this one’s going to put him through the wringer.” Lula made room for Zeke as he cautiously transferred the gravy pan from the stove to the sink.

  Zeke said, “Dad, you just wish a girl that hot was putting you through the wringer. What’s a wringer, anyway?”

  Mister Stanley said, “Can you two finish up without my help?”

  “We’re good here,” Lula said.

  Chapter Nine

  The snow seemed apocalyptic, not falling so much as hurled. Bulletins came from the silent world: Zeke’s school was closed, and so, more unexpectedly, was Mister Stanley’s office. New rules, emergency measures, enabled Mister Stanley to turn on the early-morning TV news. Batting at snowflakes, as if in playful combat, a reporter puffed her cheeks and chafed her arms, while, behind her, a rickrack of broken trucks zigzagged across the highway.

  “Record breaking,” Mister Stanley said several times to make it clear that he was being kept from work by severe climate change and not by unmanly squeamishness about inclement weather. Zeke faked jubilation when in fact Lula suspected he would rather be at school than home with her and his dad.

  The endless day stretched before them. How would they get through it? Everything grated on Lula’s nerves. The rumble of Zeke’s music, Mister Stanley’s footsteps. How could anyone live with anyone else, unless you were tied by blood or sex and didn’t have any choice? How tiny the large house had become, and how she longed to escape it.

  She said, “I’m going back to bed.”

  “I don’t blame you,” said Mister Stanley.

  Months ago, Lula had found three sleeping pills in Ginger’s medicine cabinet, and though she was wary of any Ginger-associated medication, she’d saved them for an emergency, which the news had assured them this was.

  Lula’s sleep was racked by nightmares, most of which she forgot, except for one in which she was visited by her dead parents and Granny, and another dream—or was it the same dream?—in which she sat in a stadium and watched truckloads of pastry flour dumped on Dunia. Lula somehow understood that this was a fundamentalist country in which adulterers were executed by being baked into apple pies.

  When she awoke, it was still snowing. The sky was battleship gray. An alarming jingle was blaring from Lula’s phone.

  “Lula?” said a voice. “Did I wake you up? Wake up! It’s afternoon.”

  Lula said in Albanian, “I was just dreaming about you!”

  Dunia said in English, “I hope I was having fun.”

  “Where are you?” Lula said.

  Dunia said, “Twenty miles from you. In Maplewood, New Jersey.”

  “I thought you were in Tirana. You always talked shit about New Jersey.”

  “I never got there,” said Dunia. “I’m here. Like you.”

  “I didn’t hear from you, I didn’t hear from you. I started thinking you’d been trafficked.”

  “Very funny,” Dunia said. “Though in a manner of speaking I was. Ha ha. I’m joking. I’m married. I married Steve. A rich American plastic surgeon. Very romantic story.”

  “Why didn’t you answer my e-mails?”

  “That’s the unromantic part,” said Dunia. “I’ll tell you when I see you. Want to meet for coffee? Have lunch? Go shopping?”

  “Now? Have you looked out the window? I don’t have transportation. I’m stuck here.”

  “I�
��ve got a driver,” said Dunia. “I’ll come to you.”

  “A driver?” Lula repeated.

  “A driver!” Dunia shouted. “What’s wrong with this connection?”

  Dunia sounded the same and different. Well, Lula had changed too. Even if nothing happens, you get new cells every seven years, so technically the former best friends were now one-seventh strangers.

  “I didn’t mean today,” Dunia said. “I meant a week from today! See you then. Kiss kiss.”

  Lula walked to the window. Mister Stanley had shoveled the walk without the help he always asked, and never got, from Zeke.

  Zeke was playing like a child in the snow, a big child with no one to play with. He’d made a snowman self-portrait, three white snowballs, the middle one in a ripped leather jacket and with something—shoe polish?—trickled down the sides of its lumpy spherical head to give it vampire hair. Its eyes were two silvery CDs that caught the last light of day. The snowman had its back to the street, an unusual choice. It seemed to be looking at the house, and one silver eye winked at Lula.

  Lula had picked up, from Mister Stanley and Zeke, the good habit of not worrying too much about the neighbors, a welcome change from Tirana, where for many reasons, none of them good, the neighbors were the first thing you thought of after food and money and sex, and often before. Inhabited entirely by schoolchildren and their parents, and a few old relicts, Mister Stanley’s block came to a sleepy sort of life only on summer weekends when someone held a yard sale. Today it was deserted except for cleaning ladies, delivery guys, and an occasional handyman blowing snow from one lawn to another.

  No one saw the Range Rover pull up in front of Mister Stanley’s house, and though Dunia moved as if on stage, Lula and the driver were the only audience for Dunia’s theatrical scowling at each crumb of snow that menaced her beautiful boots. Where had Dunia gotten such shoes, or the stylish black coat, understated and, Lula could tell, terrifyingly expensive? How had Dunia skipped a step from servant maid to queen, from an illegal-alien East Village mojito-joint waitress to a rich New Yorker, or at least New Jerseyite?

  Dunia was always a fast learner. It was Dunia who’d taught Lula how to navigate the fitting rooms and cosmetics counters. Lula told herself not to be jealous. Lula probably had many things that Dunia didn’t have, though right now she couldn’t think of one. Watching her friend’s halting progress up Mister Stanley’s front walk, Lula felt simultaneously overjoyed to see her and sick with love for Dunia’s clothes. Lula’s happiness should have been pure. Dunia was healthy and safe.