My New American Life

by Francine Prose

  “Congratulations,” said Lula uncertainly.

  “Thanks,” said Dunia. “Anyway, I was going to call you. Guess where I am now? Twenty-fourth floor, Trump Towers. Overlooking the Hudson. Like Jesus told Peter from the cross, I can see your house from here. I rented a two-bedroom. I was thinking you could move in. Don’t worry about the rent, at least for now. I’m bored. I want someone to hang with. Hey, it’s your ticket out of New Jersey. We’ll max out Steve’s credit cards. Then we’ll figure out what next.”

  “There’s a job I want,” said Lula. As if she had to convince Dunia, of all people, that she was an upstanding future citizen of the United States. “A court interpreter, to start with . . .”

  “Fine! I already said I won’t charge you rent. When do you want to come and check the place out?”

  “I don’t know. When would be good for you?”

  “Right now,” Dunia said.

  By the time Lula got back that afternoon, she was already seeing Mister Stanley’s house with the tender detachment of someone who used to live there. Or from the more objective perspective of someone else who used to live there. She wasn’t the same person who, only a few months before, had gazed out her bedroom window and monitored the arrival of an SUV full of trouble.

  The last remnants of that foolish girl had been blown away by the winter wind off the Hudson, the ice needles and face slaps of cold she’d fended off on her way from the subway to Dunia’s overheated lobby, so like a cross between a Las Vegas casino and a grand hotel in Moscow. The uniformed doorman handed Lula over to another uniformed guard, who showed her to the elevator, where yet another lieutenant in Dunia’s private army whisked Lula into the sky.

  Dunia was waiting outside her door, perhaps to watch Lula admire the depth to which Dunia’s high heels sank into the hall carpet. Welcome to America! Finally! They’d come a long way from Tirana. Dunia planted smoky kisses on Lula’s cheek, then showed her into the apartment and stepped back to watch her friend’s response to the Hudson River and half of New Jersey flinging itself at their feet.

  “This works for me,” said Lula.

  “Look out the other direction,” said Dunia, grabbing Lula’s arm as they contemplated the skyscrapers poking their glittering heads through clouds of dusty sunlight.

  “It’s a sublet,” said Dunia. “In six months I will have spent every last penny I got from Steve. But worth it, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve got sixteen hundred dollars saved up,” Lula said.

  “Don’t make me laugh,” said Dunia.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” Lula said.

  Dunia said, “All the little personal touches ordered and paid for before I left Steve. I was thinking ahead.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Steve,” said Lula.

  “I thanked Steve, believe me,” Dunia said. “Jorge the driver thanked him, too. I think Steve’s living with Jorge now.”

  “The driver was cute,” said Lula.

  “The driver is cute,” said Dunia. “Can you believe I put this place together, all by myself, in two weeks?”

  “You should have called me,” Lula said.

  “I called you now,” said Dunia. “We’ll have fun. Let’s wind the clock back a couple of years.”

  “We deserve it,” said Lula.

  “We earned it,” Dunia said.

  Now that she was leaving, Lula welcomed the three bus rides home, which gave her plenty of time to figure out how to word her resignation. She knew it would be more professional to inform her boss before she told his son, but she wanted Zeke to hear the news directly from her.

  As always, Lula was home before Zeke arrived, and as always she said, “Let’s go get some food,” exactly as she had every weekday afternoon for, God help her, more than a year. Their drama would play out less tragically in the car. Zeke would be at the wheel of the vehicle that he loved more than anyone, including Lula. He would not be looking at her, and his mind would be partly on the road. Better to tell him en route to the store than on the way home, because if he was upset, he would have to pull himself together before they went into the market full of strangers for whom he would have to wear the mask of unshakable teenage cool. The Good Earth was only a few minutes away. Lula had no time to spare.

  They were barely out of the driveway when Lula said, “We’ll always be friends. But there are going to be some changes. I’m going to work as a court interpreter, and I found a place to live, nearer downtown Manhattan.”

  Zeke said, “That’s bullshit about your getting that job. So are you moving in with that guy who was here when . . . You know. The guy you said was your cousin. Like anyone believed that. The guy who let me drive his Lexus.”

  “Not at all!” said Lula. “I think that guy’s in jail.”

  “I liked that guy,” said Zeke.

  “So did I,” said Lula.

  “What’s he in jail for?”

  “For being an asshole.”

  “I didn’t know that was a crime,” said Zeke. “Especially in New Jersey.”

  “It can be,” Lula said. “The point is, I’m not moving in with him. I’m living with my friend Dunia. She’s got a place in Trump Towers.”

  “That is awesome,” said Zeke. “Can I move in with you too?”

  “Maybe someday,” Lula said.

  “So you’re just leaving us? Disappearing just like that?”

  “You’re going to college,” Lula said. “You don’t need me. You’re practically grown up. You can pour your own cereal into a bowl.”

  “I don’t eat cereal,” Zeke said.

  “Well, you should,” said Lula.

  Zeke, who had been slumped behind the wheel, pulled himself up to his full height. He said, “Will I ever see you again?”

  “Constantly,” said Lula. “You’ll get sick of me. I’ll visit you at college. I’ll be your embarrassing old auntie. You and your friends can stay with me and Dunia when you come into the city.” Would Dunia still have her apartment by then? They would worry about that later.

  “Here we are,” said Zeke. “At the store.”

  “Park close, it’s icy,” Lula said.

  “I always do,” said Zeke. “I’m a guy. Anyhow, the parking lot’s empty.”

  Deserted except for a pickup truck, The Good Earth was closed for repairs. A worker wheeling out a cart of broken drywall told them, “Some dirtbags broke in and stripped the place clean. I don’t know how those dumbfucks think they’re going to fence a truckload of organic cauliflower.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Zeke. “Everything here is cheesy.”

  Lula’s head felt swimmy. Another supermarket break-in? Alvo was in jail and couldn’t possibly have been the dirtbag behind this one. Which proved he was innocent if, as the DA claimed, the robberies were all committed by the same person. Was there someone Lula should tell? Should she mention this to Don? She’d mentioned enough to Don.

  From the edges of her consciousness came a sound like a cat choking on a hair ball. Zeke was crying. Gelid tears slipped down his chalk-white cheeks.

  “Everything sucks,” he said. “Mom going crazy. Now you’re leaving. I think I might be gay.”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Lula. “I promise.”

  “Sometimes I wish I was a vampire,” said Zeke.

  “Why would you want that?” said Lula.

  “Because you don’t have to live and you don’t have to die. It’s easy.”

  “Not for a vampire,” said Lula.

  “Probably not,” said Zeke.

  Lula put her arm around him. A stranger driving past might have mistaken them for teenage sweethearts. Lula tried to beam concentrated rays of friendship and reassurance directly from her brain into his, and from moment to moment she felt a warm rush flowing back in her direction, so that it almost seemed to be working.

  She said, “Let’s try the Shopwell. I know it’s further, but the drive would be fun.”

  Zeke looked at her. “It’
s too far.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “No one’s going to tell your dad.”

  “I know that,” said Zeke. He smiled his frozen fake smile, and then, as Lula watched, it slowly, slowly came unstuck and turned into a real one.

  Lula put her head on Zeke’s shoulder as he pulled out onto the street. And they rode like that, without speaking, all the way to the market and home.

  If there was one thing Lula should have learned from living at Mister Stanley’s, it was the folly of comparing your life with how you imagined someone else’s life, based on their real estate. Once, passing a house like Mister Stanley’s, she might have envied its inhabitants their American happiness, complete with all the American creature comforts. Now she knew better. But still she found it a challenge of the spirit not to sink into the quicksand of envy that lay in the gap between the suitcases into which she was stuffing her possessions and the apartment full of designer furniture that Dunia had earned by being a sex worker of sorts, if not the sort Lula once feared. Well, at least Lula was mobile. She could move across the river without the twenty-foot van that, she hoped, Dunia could still afford when they got evicted from Trump Towers. Lula was like her ancestors, strapping all their worldly goods onto the backs of donkeys and migrating to higher pastures.

  The real trouble with packing was that it left so much of her mind free and undefended against the cringe-inducing memories of last night’s conversation with Mister Stanley. Lula flinched when she recalled Mister Stanley suggesting they go into his study. Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. And Lula, fearing that she might lose her resolve, announced that she was leaving while they were still in the kitchen. Even now, her face flushed when she remembered how Mister Stanley had struggled to turn his shock and disappointment into the legitimate concern of an upper-middle-class single dad dealing with an all-too-common domestic-help emergency.

  “One would think you might at least give notice,” Mister Stanley said huffily. “After all this time, two weeks seems the least that—”

  “I would stay, if you needed me,” Lula said. “If you needed someone to replace me. Mister Stanley, no insult, but Zeke is leaving for college in the fall. There’s nothing I actually do. He can go to the market and microwave dinner by himself. I’m sorry, but he’s growing up. And I’m not sure that it would be the best thing for Zeke to have me here for two more weeks when he knows I’m leaving.”

  “The best thing for Zeke” were the magic words guaranteed to vanquish Mister Stanley. He said, “I suppose I should have expected this after our conversation last night.”

  Lula said, “Zeke’s a great kid. A very strong and beautiful person. You’ve done a terrific job with him in a difficult situation.” She believed every word she was saying, and at the same time she was aware of how desperately she needed to keep Mister Stanley on her side. The green card was only part of it. Mister Stanley was her sponsor. Sponsor was only part of it. Mister Stanley was family. Mister Stanley would always be part of her new American life.

  Mister Stanley said, “You’ve done wonders for him. We all have to thank you for that.”

  “Thank you,” said Lula, inadequately.

  “You’re an inspiration, Lula. Not just to Zeke but to us all. Watching how you live, your nerve and determination. The courage to leave one life and start a whole new one, somewhere else . . . It almost makes one think one could—”

  “You could!” said Lula. “You could quit your job and go back to teaching, if that’s what you want. I’m sure a million colleges would jump at the chance to hire you! You could . . .” They both waited for Lula to imagine another positive life change that Mister Stanley could make. “You could . . .”

  “I suppose I could,” said Mister Stanley. “And given the likelihood of a financial crisis, or let’s say a correction, I probably should.” Lula and Mister Stanley stared at each other across the kitchen, a look in which, it seemed to Lula, they exchanged more pure unvarnished truth than in all the time she’d worked here. Mister Stanley wouldn’t quit his job. He would stay on until he retired or until the crisis he predicted occurred. Zeke would leave home, and Mister Stanley would live here alone, dutifully visiting Ginger, who would get better or not, relapse or not.

  Lula looked away. She felt as if the word hopeless was tattooed across Mister Stanley’s forehead. In Albanian, pashprese. Pashprese meant an orphan begging on the streets of Tirana. Pashprese meant a family of eight crammed into one room of someone’s aunt’s apartment out near the Mother Teresa airport. Pashprese meant seeing your country run by dictators and gangsters and murderous politicians. Pashprese was not the same as hopeless. Hopeless was American, hopeless was Mister Stanley alone in his big comfortable house, working and making money so his wife and son didn’t have to live with him.

  Lula walked around so that Mister Stanley stood between her and the lamp. She memorized his glowing ears so the image would be available in case she needed it to light her way through some dark corridor in the future.

  Lula said, “Mister Stanley, you saved my life.”

  “Call me Stanley,” he said. “Please.”

  “Thank you, Stanley,” Lula said.

  “You’re welcome,” said Mister Stanley.

  The next morning, as Lula folded and layered her sweaters in a suitcase, she heard herself make a sound somewhere between a sigh of grief and a grunt of self-loathing. But why should she feel ashamed? She had meant it one hundred percent when she thanked Mister Stanley for saving her life. And now it was time to have that life. When a door opened, you had to go through. Was it paranoid or realistic, half empty or half full, to assume that the door, any door, might not open twice?

  Lula surveyed her baggage, her new laptop in its case. In fact, she wasn’t so mobile. When she moved here, Mister Stanley had driven her from the city with all her things, but it seemed cruel to ask him to transport her stuff to Dunia’s. Could she find a taxi to take all this? Or did she need a truck? She would have to ask Dunia. Could someone come today? Or would she have to live like this, rooting around in boxes of clothes, breathing in the gritty sorrow and shame swirling around Zeke and Mister Stanley, abandoned yet again? How long would it take to find someone to get her out of New Jersey?

  Tires screeched against the curb. Lula ran to her window and saw two vehicles draw up, an old-model American car painted a shiny eggplant color, driven by Guri, and behind it the black Lexus. The perfect timing of the G-Men appearing at the perfect moment inspired Lula to imagine even more unlikely events. For example, Alvo waiting for her in the back seat of the Lexus.

  Okay, that was too much to ask. Lula watched the two men lock their vehicles, Guri with a key, Genti with a stagy flick of the remote.

  It might be fatally stupid, her being happy to see them. She’d assumed they were the same guys from before. The friendly burglars whose boss had taken her dancing Christmas Eve. The appreciative ones who thought she could save him from jail. The grateful ones who could help her move to Dunia’s. But for all she knew, the two bruisers hustling up the front walk were the thugs they’d always been, the violent sons of bitches come to punish her for letting them down. They were here to blame her for their boss being sent away. How ironic, how like the corny stories she wrote for Don and Mister Stanley: In the end, the two villains reveal their true natures. Just when things are finally starting to go her way, they beat her to a bloody mess no man will ever want again. Once you let the devil in . . . She tried to remember Granny’s saying. Once you let the devil in . . . then what?

  But neither Guri nor Genti was talented enough to fake the bright amiable faces they showed her when she cracked open the door.

  “Little Sister,” Guri said. “Great to see you! Open up.”

  “How was Pennsylvania?” Lula said.

  “Connecticut,” said Guri. “Business trip to Norwalk. Open the door, please.”

  “You missed all the action,” said Lula.

  “Let us in.” Genti’s shoulders
were up to his ears. “Come on. It’s chilly.”

  “Why?” Lula asked. “What do you want?”

  “To thank you,” said Genti. “I swear on my children’s lives.”

  Lula unfastened the chain. She said, “As a matter of fact, you guys couldn’t have come at a better time.”

  Genti said, “That’s what I told this lazy fuck. You can thank me for dragging his sorry ass off the couch.”

  They waited for Lula to ask them in and offer some refreshment. But it was no longer Lula’s house. She was visiting too.

  “What happened to Alvo?” she asked. “I mean Arkon.”

  “Whatever your boy did, it worked,” said Genti. “The boss isn’t going to jail. He’s being deported instead. Too bad for us. But he’s fine with it. For him it’s a free ticket home, where he’ll have his pick of Albanian girls. Plus his mom’s a dynamite cook.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Lula. “I wish I could take credit.” Had Don made a call, after all? Lula doubted it. Things had taken their course. Some judge came up with a better alternative to the American taxpayer housing and feeding a big strong Albanian boy for the next fifteen years. For the first time since she’d been in this country, everyone was overjoyed about someone being deported.

  “Who can say who did what?” Genti said. “Who wants to know? The outcome is what matters. And we want to thank you. Maybe there is a favor we can do for you in return—”

  “There is,” said Lula. “You can give me a ride. I’m moving to my friend Dunia’s place in the city.”

  “How much stuff do you have?” said Guri.

  “Not much. It could fit in the Lexus, easy.”

  “It’s about time,” said Guri. “Don’t take it wrong, but we always wondered how long our Little Sister could go on living in this tomb.”