My New American Life
Page 16
The two friends hugged in the doorway.
“You smell great,” said Lula.
“Specially blended,” said Dunia. “From roses that bloom once every twenty years.”
“You’re kidding,” said Lula.
“Half kidding,” Dunia said. “Once every decade.”
They hugged again, and Lula pressed her face into Dunia’s cashmere shawl. Only when the danger was past did Lula realize how worried she’d been.
Dunia said, “Can we go inside now? I’m freezing my you-know-whats off.”
“Sorry,” Lula said. “Coffee?”
“American,” said Dunia. “If you have it.”
“Starbucks,” Lula said.
She started off toward the kitchen so she wouldn’t have to witness Dunia’s response to Ginger decor and by extension Lula’s life. Dunia was an emissary from another world, a messenger bearing a mirror. Meanwhile Lula noted with relief that Dunia’s roses had already overpowered the musty dead air of houses like this, where everything fun had already happened in the distant past. Why should Lula make excuses for herself? Let Dunia do the talking.
Dunia followed Lula into the kitchen, perched on a stool, and leaned both elbows on the counter. Her pale breasts scalloped the empty space inside the V of her dove-colored sweater.
“Sweet scene,” Dunia said. “Homey.”
“It’s a job,” Lula said. Mister Stanley’s house was a step up, many steps up, from the skinny Belarusian girl’s walk-up. But the purse that Dunia plunked on the counter was many steps up from Mister Stanley’s. They were friends, they loved each other. Why should a pocketbook matter?
“Please don’t smoke.” Lula’s upturned palms cradled the fragile ecosystem around her.
Dunia shook her head but put her cigarettes away. “I’m used to it. It’s American. I told my husband I quit smoking. Steve used to bring home photos of cancerous black lungs.”
“Tell me about Steve,” said Lula.
Dunia said, “What’s to tell? Steve is nice. Steve is positive. Steve knows what he wants. Steve is rich. Is Steve hot? No, Steve is not hot. If I met him for the first time, I’d think he was gay. That’s what I thought when I met him for the first time. Mistake. Steve is not gay. He’s American. He wants me to be American. When I talk about my old life, he looks bored, so I quit. At the beginning, he was fascinated by all the Albanian stuff. But now he wants me to be newborn, he wants my life to have started on the day we met. No past, no friends, English only, except—”
Lula said, “Is that why you disappeared?”
“Not exactly,” said Dunia. “But sure, maybe yes. I was trying. I thought, I’ll give the marriage a shot. Steve is very controlling. He throws tantrums, but they’re easy to avoid. Don’t leave the alarm system off or the faucet running. Otherwise, no problem. I get to shop till I drop in return for sex that’s always short and always the same. Two, maybe three times a week. Of course his family assumed I was a Russian hooker. A million times his mom and sister and aunts interrogated me about how we met. Obviously they were thinking online, or some ad in the phone book. So now I’m like the Earthly Beauty. I make Steve pay every time he sees me naked.”
Lula leaned across the counter and kissed her friend on the cheek. It was too complicated to explain that she’d written a story about Earthly Beauty, but it made her happy to even consider explaining and to decide against it.
“What was that for?” asked Dunia.
“I’m glad to see you,” said Lula. “So how did you meet Steve?”
“At the airport.” Dunia reached again for a cigarette, then remembered. “I was having a problem with my ticket home. I should have known. I bought it from a bucket shop behind a realtor in the Bronx. The guy at the ticket counter hated me on sight. Our discussion got hot. I called him an asshole. Big deal. He was an asshole. Also a baby. Big Baby Asshole Airline Agent called for backup. I thought, Here we go. I’m traveling to Guantánamo on a one-way ticket.”
Lula said, “My lawyer has a client in Guantánamo.”
“Sad,” Dunia said. “Poor him. Steve was in the business-class line. He got out of line and saved me. He had time before his flight. That’s the kind of guy Steve is, gets to the airport three hours early. He was going to Nassau for some plastic surgery convention. We sat at one of those little round tables with high stools. God must have commanded me to travel in a short skirt instead of a sweatsuit. After two whiskeys Steve asked me: If he canceled his trip, would I go home with him right then? The next morning he said he’d take care of everything. Everything. And he did.”
“That must have been some night,” Lula said.
“For Steve it was,” said Dunia. “End of story. He knows people. I’ll be a citizen soon. Married to an American doctor. It’s a dream come true.”
“Nice.” Lula chafed her palms together, dusting off the obstacles that ordinary people went through to get where Dunia was. She shivered with self-pity. Everyone else had it easy, everybody but her, everyone got the lucky breaks that whisked them along the road down which Lula was trudging, step by difficult step. She told herself, Have patience, or at least some pride. She had a work visa, she’d have a green card, she’d become a citizen maybe, and all on her own, without having to marry some guy she didn’t love. On the other hand, everything could still go wrong. She could be deported back to Tirana, and Dunia would be in her fancy house, shopping for fabulous clothes.
“Nothing’s easy,” said Dunia. “Tonight at dinner he’ll tell me about some brilliant rhinoplasty or challenging butt reduction. But if I say anything, anything at all, he picks up a magazine. Any time I want some body part tightened or tweaked, he’ll do it for free. His business partner gave his wife a permanent smile and a killer cleavage.”
“So why did you call me now?” Lula said.
“I missed you,” said Dunia. “I’m bored.”
“It can get boring here,” Lula said. How good it felt to say so. From time to time, Mister Stanley and Zeke suggested that Lula must be bored, and Lula always protested. No, not at all, she was finding plenty to do. Alvo and his friends had implied that Mister Stanley’s house was a tomb. They’d said it smelled like the grave.
“Anywhere can get boring.” Dunia frowned at her pearly lip print on Mister Stanley’s coffee cup. Licking her fingertip, she dabbed at the stain like a mother wiping another woman’s kiss from her child’s face. “So many minutes in a day! At some point Steve will ask the driver—in Spanish—what I did today, so it’s good my driver can tell Steve about you, and Steve won’t get jealous thinking I went to see some boyfriend. It’s like living under Communism. Okay, I know it’s not like Communism. The shopping is better. The sex is worse.”
“A driver!” Lula said.
Dunia smiled lewdly. “Jorge. Dominican. Twenty-two. Drop-dead handsome.”
“I can’t even drive,” said Lula. “Most of the time I’m stuck here. Unless I take the bus.”
“I told you,” Dunia said. “Ten miles to downtown if you swam.”
Lula said, “You still have an accent. How does American Steve like that?”
Dunia made a face. “He likes to talk during sex. Then he likes the accent. He even likes me to talk Albanian. He thinks I’m begging, Fuck me up to my eyeballs! When what I’m really saying is, Tomorrow I have to tell Gladys the maid to clean the refrigerator. Out of bed he doesn’t like the accent so much. He says the more American I speak, the more Americans I speak to, the more American I sound.”
Lula said, “It’s the opposite here. Everybody wants me to hang on to my roots. They love all the fairy tales and the sayings and folk songs and crap. You know what? I’ve started writing little stories about home.”
“You always were a creative person. What an imagination! I remember you getting drunk one night after our shift at La Changita and making up some crazy shit about your dad teaching you to shoot Madonna in the heart. Whatever happened to Franco the waiter? He wasn’t so cute, but still . . .”
Dunia said, “I missed you. But listen, no shopping today. I don’t have the time I thought. The cleaning guy is coming to pick up the living room curtains. Also I have to go home and talk dinner with Gladys.” Dunia kissed her fingertips. “Fried chicken. She worked for Steve before I got there.”
It was a sign of power, having somewhere you had to be. In the same article in which the female CEO advised buying fancy underwear, another successful corporate woman said her secret was to always give the impression that she had even less time than she actually had. Lula too had somewhere to be—right here—and someone who needed her: Zeke.
“We have Estrelia,” said Lula.
Dunia slipped back into her coat. “Call me. Call me soon. Meantime you can stop worrying that I’m a sex slave in Dubai.”
They hugged and kissed, then hugged again. And then Dunia was gone, leaving Lula feeling more hopeful and less alone, but so physically exhausted that she drifted into the living room and sank into the couch, where she remained until the last trace of Dunia’s perfume had followed her out of the house.
Dunia’s safety and good fortune were a relief, and yet her visit was like a spray of ice water, shocking Lula out of the coma in which she’d been snoozing at Mister Stanley’s. Wake up! Girls found rich husbands or married men they loved. They didn’t hide out in a Jersey suburb dreaming that Alvo would find some tough-guy-contractor language in which to tell Lula that he thought about her as much as she thought about him.
It was a welcome distraction to sit at Zeke’s computer. Would anyone go for a story about a man who tried to build an apartment house that kept collapsing until he dreamed that the solution was to wall his beloved wife into the foundation? The house stayed up, but the foundation was always wet, soaked with the woman’s tears. Mister Stanley and Don Settebello obviously believed that the laws of physics no longer applied once you crossed the Albanian border. It was fortunate that she’d mentioned mixing fiction and nonfiction. When she’d written enough for a book, they would sort it all out, but for now her two American guardian angels could think what they wanted about her pretending her stories were true.
Lula was writing the scene in which the builder explains to his wife why his real estate needs demand that she be buried alive, and when she refuses, he shoves her into a crawl space and, sobbing, mixes the cement. Lula was so lost in her story that when the doorbell rang, she heard it as the clang of the husband’s shovel, smoothing out concrete. She ran downstairs and opened the door to find Leather Jacket on the front steps.
“Little Sister, why so sad?” Leather Jacket—Genti—kept glancing back over his shoulder. The unforgiving winter light pooled in his pitted cheeks. Lula told him to step inside, where he seemed even more uneasy. Had he come to ask her out behind Alvo’s back? Was Alvo passing her along to his friend, a sick male custom she’d heard of but never experienced firsthand? Did they think she was a hunk of roast lamb to be tossed to the next guy down the table? More likely Genti had come for the gun. Let him stand in the hall and mumble.
“What?” said Lula.
Mumble mumble.
“I can’t understand you!”
“Mumble mumble Christmas Eve? My boss? . . . not busy Christmas Eve? He wants to know, Do you want to go out?”
Why was everything a question? Genti sounded like a teenage girl. Gradually she understood. The guy was playing Cupid! It was all Lula could do not to throw her arms around him and squeeze till his jacket crackled. How touching that Alvo hadn’t wanted to risk rejection in person. At the same time, how thoughtless and conceited of him to assume she wouldn’t have plans. Christmas Eve was only two weeks away, and she had no plans.
What would happen to Leather Jacket if she told him to tell Alvo she was busy? Most likely the messenger wouldn’t get killed if the bad news was about dating. As if Alvo cared enough to give his friend a hard time. He would just send one of the G-Men to ask another girl.
Lula said, “Tell him yes, I’d be happy.”
“He’ll be here at eight? He said dress nice?”
“Dress nice?” said Lula. “I always do. As opposed to what?” Where did Alvo get the nerve? But maybe it wasn’t male arrogance. Maybe it was semantics. Maybe nice meant up, dress up, maybe they were sparing Lula the embarrassment of arriving at a formal event in a T-shirt and jeans. Obviously, she would dress up. It was Christmas Eve. But before she could ask for details, Genti shook her hand and left. Mission accomplished, he could go back to being a busy guy with important business elsewhere.
Two weeks until Christmas. The winter days were too short and bloodless to sustain the weight of thought required to fathom the meaning of “dress nice.” Nice by Dunia standards? Or Albanian nice: too shiny, too tight, too synthetic, and above all, too leopard. Nice like the big-haired singers who traveled the Balkan circuit with their big-haired manager husbands? Alvo was way cooler than that. He’d mean what Lula meant by nice.
Lula had patience and goodwill to spare, especially for Zeke. On their drives to The Good Earth, they mixed high school metaphysical talk about the purpose of life (Lula assured him that life had a purpose) with the usual chitchat about driving and the other drivers, who, according to Zeke, were getting crazier and angrier as the holidays approached.
“What do you want for Christmas?” Lula asked.
“I don’t know. Nothing. Wait. There’s a DVD, this vintage vampire film called Nosferatu.”
“Write it down,” said Lula, who had no intention of spending money to feed Zeke’s vampire obsession. She’d already bought him a leather belt on St. Marks Place, with rows of studs and grommets, and an iPod Nano for Mister Stanley.
Against her better instincts, she’d been letting Zeke drive to the market even when the weather was bad. She didn’t tell Mister Stanley when the Olds slid into a snowbank, and Zeke and Lula had to dig it out, ruining Lula’s boots. It would be hard enough explaining that she was going out Christmas Eve, abandoning Mister Stanley and Zeke on the anniversary of Ginger’s departure.
She waited for a Saturday afternoon. Zeke had gone somewhere with friends. Christmas shopping, he’d said. Lula found Mister Stanley in the living room, reading the weekend sections of the Sunday paper. Tomorrow’s news today. He was wearing his chinos, a cardigan, and a knit shirt, in which he managed to look more stiff and uncomfortable than he did in a suit. He looked like Mr. Rogers, the first American Lula ever saw on her granny’s contraband TV.
“I need to talk to you,” Lula said.
Mister Stanley said, “I have a wild idea. Let’s go for a walk.”
“Too wild,” Lula said. “It’s cold out.”
“The air does one good,” he said. “You’ll turn into Dracula, entombed in this dark house.”
A funny remark from the father of a vampire son. He was making a Mister Stanley joke. Trying to be helpful.
“Ha ha,” Lula said. “Okay, let me get my coat.” Outside, she pointed accusingly at the plumes their breath made in the air.
“Just around the block,” said Mister Stanley. “No one is going to freeze.”
Lula and Mister Stanley had the street to themselves, unless you counted the inflated plastic reindeer and carolers on the neighbors’ lawns. Every so often a car passed, but no one slowed to watch the two of them drift from house to house, pausing to gaze at the Christmas displays, each of which, Lula thought sourly, consumed enough electricity to power all of Albania. But surely the lights were low-wattage. Why couldn’t she just enjoy this harmless American custom instead of going straight for the dismissive immigrant envy? Because the decorations were intended to make outsiders envy the happiness inside.
No matter how much Lula had learned about American family life, she still longed to have participated in those family trips to the big-box store, the assembling of the decorations, with Dad and Junior following Mom and Sis’s cheerful creative suggestions. Under Communism, one of the fe
w foreign texts they’d been allowed to read was a translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl,” which was taught as an illustration of class brutality in the West. Like everyone, Lula believed it. But in her new American life, she had learned about nuance. Mister Stanley came from the same class as the living rooms into which they were staring. An alternate title for her memoir could be On the Outside Looking In.
When Mister Stanley paused before a plastic sleigh the size of a tractor-trailer, Lula said, “I need to tell you something. I won’t be spending Christmas Eve with you and Zeke. If that’s okay with you.”
“Of course it’s okay,” said Mister Stanley, too quickly. “So. What are you doing instead?”
“Going out,” Lula said. “With friends.” If Mister Stanley asked which friends, she would say friends from La Changita.
“Well, that’s excellent,” said Mister Stanley. “We want you to have your own life.” He walked ahead to the next lawn, on which there was a crèche with a life-size camel whose plaster had chipped off so that hunks of flesh appeared to have been clawed away in a fight.
“It shouldn’t make any difference,” he said. “I think Zeke would be just as happy if we did away with the tree and the trimmings and the holiday cheer.”
Holiday cheer? Had Mister Stanley forgotten that last year he brought home a dead tree, and they’d spent Christmas at the mall?
“Are you sure?” asked Lula.
“I don’t know,” said Mister Stanley.
Lula said, “When they outlawed religion under the dictatorship, people still celebrated. They’d pile up pyramids of baklava that looked like Christmas trees.” Her granny had made baklava on Christmas. The pyramid part was extra. “The dictator ignored it because he loved pyramids so much he had himself buried in one. Until they dug him up.”