Dogs With Bagels

by Maria Elena Sandovici

  The woman behind the desk gives me a stern look.

  “The only rooms we have available right now are twin rooms.” She types something into the computer. “But I would be able to give you a special rate of six hundred fifty dollars plus tax.”

  Her smile is so fake that I almost recoil. She can probably tell that I’m an impostor, a gray mouse with not enough money to stay at the Plaza. For just one second I wonder if I have enough credit left for six hundred fifty dollars plus tax. I doubt it. I think of Mami, who uses only cash, and thinks sixty-dollar shoes are expensive. What would she think of a six hundred fifty dollar tiny bar of soap?

  I thank the receptionist, and walk away defeated. Outside, I take off Gretchen’s stupid shoes. My feet are killing me, and I have to walk thirty blocks uptown. The hot pavement feels comforting on my bare feet. Some late-night stores are still open on the Upper West Side, flowers and fruit displayed in stands on the sidewalk, busy people buying things inside. I like seeing people around me, even at this late hour. But the knot in my stomach is still there. And it feels worse the closer I get to his house.

  The doorman buzzes upstairs. “Mister Pop, Liliana is here.” He drags out my name the way most Americans do: Leahleahahnna. It sounds like an exotic plant. That’s what Alex used to say when we were kids.

  Tati’s building is decent, but pales in comparison to Gretchen’s. Back in the day, like when he first moved here, or even later, when I started going to CUNY, I used to be impressed with this lobby. Now I find it completely unremarkable, an average lobby in an average building on the Upper West Side. It looks nice enough, but you wouldn’t call it elegant, not if you have the misfortune of being familiar with the type of elegance reserved for the very rich.

  In the elevator I try to put my shoes back on, but my blisters are way too painful. I look in the mirror. My makeup is smudged, my eyes puffy, my hair in disarray. So much for the expensive blow dry. Why on earth didn’t it last longer? I dip my finger in my mouth. I try to wipe off the black stains under my eyes. I make a face at myself in the mirror. The elevator stops. I feel like I swallowed a rock. I wish I could evaporate or something.

  It’s Momo who opens the door. Momo in a white dressing gown, her dark hair pinned up. Her makeup is gone. But even so, she’s beautiful.

  “What on earth is going on, Lili?”

  I suddenly feel very tired.

  “Nothing. Can I come in?”

  But she’s still standing in the doorway, a worried look on her face.

  “What happened to you? Have you been crying?”

  I shift my weight from one foot to the other. I’m angry with Momo. I’m angry that she’s even here, angry she wasn’t home to rescue me so I wouldn’t have to go through this.

  “Can I come in, or are we gonna stand in the doorway all night?”

  Momo sighs, and crosses her arms.

  “Do you know what time it is, Liliana?”

  I puff through my nose like Gretchen. Even pronounced correctly, I still hate my full name.

  “You go to bed late anyway, so why does it matter? I’m surprised you guys are even here.”

  “Well we are, and what time we go to bed is nobody’s business. You can’t just show up in the middle of the night and pretend all is normal. I mean, look at you!”

  “Whatever. Can I come in?”

  I brush past her, almost pushing her out of the way. I walk straight into the bathroom and stick my dirty feet in the tub, run the water, and slather my toes in Momo’s expensive soap.

  I grab a white towel, wipe my feet, then throw it on the floor. I take a deep breath, brace myself, open the door, push again past Momo, and head straight to the living room.

  In his early fifties, Tati is still handsome. Gretchen, who met him once, said he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen. I wouldn’t go that far, but he’s good looking.

  “Hi, Tati. You mind if I crash here tonight?”

  Tati frowns. My heart sinks. He’s gonna say yes, obviously. But what else is he gonna say?

  “Can I stay here, daddy? Just tonight?”

  I hold my breath. His dark eyes look me up and down. I can only imagine what he’s thinking.

  “Yes, sweetie, you can always stay here. You know that. Mona will fix your bed.”

  His voice is warm, conciliatory. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “If she apologizes. And only then,” Momo interjects, the hurt in her voice a little too obvious. “She can’t just come busting in here like a savage, be rude to me, and demand to be served.”

  I swear she’s driving me crazy tonight! I am so very tired. I know I’ve been rude, and I do feel sorry, but I really don’t have the patience to deal with her right now.

  “Is either of you listening to me?” Momo whines.

  Tati gives her a look of irritation. I suddenly feel sorry for her.

  “I’m sorry Momo,” I say. “You know I love you. It’s just I’m tired, is all. And my feet are killing me. Will you please fix my bed?”

  Still pouting, she goes in search of pillows, sheets, and a comforter.

  “Plapumă.” I smile, looking at the bulky load Momo is single-handedly struggling with.

  She smiles back. She finds it funny, my random use of Romanian words. It’s gotten us past many awkward moments.

  “Don’t just stand there, Lili. Help me!” Momo admonishes while straightening the sheet on the leather couch, and tucking it in. “This ain’t your mother’s house!”

  It sure ain’t yours either! But I don’t say this out loud. Instead, I pretend to help with the sheets. I’ve been unpleasant enough for one evening.

  “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on?” she prods one more time. She’s dying to know. She is my confidante of sorts. Momo certainly knows more about me than Gretchen does. I’ve dramatically inflated the number of men I’ve slept with, for Gretchen’s benefit, suspecting that her admiration might falter if she knew the truth. Momo knows that I’ve only been with two men: my ex, and a much regretted one-night-stand fueled by alcohol, and by Gretchen’s matchmaking skills. The former left me with a broken heart, the latter with a vague feeling of disgust. In both cases, Momo generously supplied condoms, advice, and a shoulder to cry on. She also insisted than neither of the two young men were good lovers, and that the best was yet to come.

  So yes, we’re close, in a way that Mami and I have never been, and probably could never be, as it surely must be unnatural for a mother and daughter to talk about intimate things.

  Momo is sitting on the couch, lighting a cigarette. Tati has gone to bed. We’re alone in the living room, and I know Momo expects me to talk to her.

  I wish she wouldn’t smoke. I hate smoke. And I hate the fact that all Romanians, other than Mami, are smokers. I wish I could tell Momo not to light up in here. After all, it’s Tati’s apartment, and he himself smokes only on the balcony. He usually airs out the place after Momo leaves. I’ve even seen him spray Febreeze into the pillows of the couch, but I’ve never told her. It would be cruel.

  “Let’s go sit outside, Momo. I feel like watching the cars go by.”

  Outside, on the balcony, her cigarette bothers me less.

  “It’s Gretchen,” I finally say. “She wanted to go home with this guy and she didn’t realize I have no way of getting in.”

  “So you still don’t have a key.”

  Why does she have to state the obvious?

  I lean over the edge of the balcony and look down. I love to see Broadway stretching down below, with all its lights, and still, at this hour, people and cars going about their business.

  “And by the looks of your feet you still have no money, not even for a lousy cab. What do you do with your paychecks from Bella? After all, you don’t pay rent.”

  I bite my lip. Can Momo even imagine what it’s like to work in retail? She probably spends on a dress what I make in a week.

  “You know I could help you with managing your money,” Momo say
s. “If only you’d let me.”

  I swallow. She knows quite a bit about money. She works in finance, after all. She makes money by doing stuff with money. The difference between her and most other members of ‘the community’ is that Momo has a cool profession, and she actually practices it, here in America. But then again, like me, she came over at a young age, and studied here. Nearly everybody else was a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or an architect, like Tati, back in Romania. They had careers over there, but once they came here they became taxi drivers, shop assistants, and such. Momo never had to do that. She went to business school, and now she works in a glass building downtown, wears tailored suits and real designer shoes, eats gourmet food, and is never out of carfare. What pisses me off is that I had the same opportunities she had, and look where it got me.

  I yawn strategically.

  “I’m really tired. Can we talk about it tomorrow, please?”

  “You do look exhausted. But you know, you can’t keep making excuses just to run away from your problems. Do you have any idea how worried your father is about you?”

  Momo’s dark eyes search mine. I swallow hard. Sometimes I just want to smack her. “I know he doesn’t say much, Lili. Victor is like that, he doesn’t express himself, but you should know, he’s terribly worried about you.”

  Bullshit. He expresses himself plenty. In fact, I’m sick of him telling me how worried he is, and how irresponsible I am.

  “I really need to go to bed, Momo. Can we please talk tomorrow?”

  She looks away. Distractedly, she stubs out her cigarette. She plays with the pack in her hand. I hope she’s not going to light another.

  “Well, I guess we better call it a night, then,” she finally says. “But I have to leave early tomorrow. I won’t be here when you wake up.”

  I yawn again and I give her a big hug.

  It’s a far cry from the Plaza, but the sheets smell clean, like lavender or something. Sweet and soothing. Tati is probably using a better laundry service these days. I like how the couch cradles my body. What a relief to finally feel comfortable.

  I didn’t draw the blinds. I like seeing the city lights. I can never have enough of that, the red sky of Manhattan. As a child, shortly after arriving here, I felt totally bewildered by the New York City sky. It never seemed to fully get dark. I wondered if I’d ever see the stars again. The sky looked almost red. After all these years I’m still not used to it. But I have come to enjoy it. M-am invăţat să-mi placă.

  2

  Sunday With Tati

  When Victor gets up the next morning, Lili is still asleep, curled up in fetal position, her mouth slightly open, a strand of drool leaking onto her pillow. He would find this disgusting in anyone else. But his little girl sleeps like a baby, her balled up fist so close to her mouth, it almost looks like she is sucking on her thumb. Definitely still a child. And a troublesome one at that.

  She still has so much growing up to do. At times he’s irritated that she’s still so immature. She’s twenty-three, after all, but in so many ways she’s still a little girl. He’s worried that she might have chosen to grow up too fast. When she left home, he panicked. It wasn’t just that it was irresponsible, crazy, in fact, her arrangement with her friend. Neither here, not there. He was worried about her. He didn’t think she was ready. He knew he was being overprotective, and a bit patriarchal, in this one instance very much a Romanian father, but he realized he didn’t like her being on her own. He wanted to still know, each night, that his little girl was sleeping safely next to her mother. Instead, Lili chose to haphazardly and irresponsibly throw herself into the world.

  He was right to worry. Last night, she seemed so lost, showing up barefoot at 2am, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Her voice sounded just like a child’s. He couldn’t even open his mouth to ask what happened. He wasn’t afraid of what he’d say, but rather of how she’d take it. He’s not an angry man. He’s always been capable of controlling himself. But whatever he said recently, whatever arguments he brought, Lili took offense. She’s accused him of ridiculous things, of not giving a damn about her, of abandoning her, of not wanting her to be happy. None of those things are true, and he hopes she doesn’t really believe them. He especially hopes she doesn’t think he abandoned her. He left one day, it’s true, taking all his possessions in two black garbage bags. But the truth is more complicated than that. He wonders, sometimes, what Maria chose to tell the children.

  He’s made mistakes, of course. But he always tried to be a good father. Attentive, involved, understanding even. Compared to most immigrant parents, Victor likes to think of himself as reasonable. He doesn’t expect his children to achieve the things he wanted for himself, but had to give up in order to make ends meet in a new country. He doesn’t throw in their faces the sacrifices he made. Though these are plenty, he doesn’t use them for emotional blackmail. It never even occurred to him to push either of his kids into architecture, the profession he loved but had to give up. He did mention several times, that according to him, architecture, medicine, and the law, are still the soundest careers out there. But he declared repeatedly that whatever path his children take, he’ll be supportive, just as long as they make practical choices and prepare themselves for standing on their own two feet. This is exactly where Lili, for all her intelligence and charm, has so far failed, and continues to struggle. His little girl has no idea what it takes to survive in this world.

  Not that she’s stupid. She did well in college. But she got a B.A. in English literature with a minor in Italian, choices he advised against, yet dutifully paid for. Now she is wasting her education, working in a high-end boutique, a job so strikingly similar to her mother’s, that the irony of it all never ceases to amaze him. He came to America hoping for a better life for his family. And here they are, fifteen years later, his bitter wife and his chipper daughter, both intelligent, both educated, both gainfully employed selling leather goods. Maria has no choice. She is a poorly adjusted immigrant, who will forever speak bad English. Lili, on the other hand, has no excuse. She had every opportunity to succeed, she still does, and she obstinately chooses to make nothing of it. He once told her he almost regretted paying for college, and the little brat spat out that after all, CUNY was cheap, and that she saved him a bundle by living at home. He then accused her of being unappreciative of him for putting her through school, and of her mother who cooked, cleaned, and did laundry for her for all these years. Her reply came quick as lightning: “Unappreciative? Of Mami? Ain’t that your job?”

  Victor frowns. He needs his coffee. He badly needs a smoke.

  He pours himself one large, steaming mug, and takes it outside, to the balcony. He likes his coffee strong and black. And he enjoys a cigarette with it above all else. Mona left early, quietly, as not to wake him, kindly starting the coffee on her way out. She’s probably the most considerate girlfriend a man could ever hope for.

  The coffee tastes just right. His tastes have never been simple ones, and living in a city that has everything to offer, he’s probably grown too sophisticated for his own good. Once his business started making money, he began exploring the culinary variety of Manhattan. His fridge and pantry started bursting with gourmet items, and slowly but surely he started to flirt with the idea of cooking. He has to admit, he used to think cooking was a woman’s job. But living on his own, he missed that homemade flavor that no restaurant can recreate. What upset him most was that he specifically yearned for his wife’s cooking. He missed the flavor of her food even more than he missed her touch, her voice, or the scent of her skin. It was his body’s ultimate betrayal, craving the nourishment prepared for him by the hands of a woman he so deeply resented.

  He learned to cook as an act of revenge. It was an empowering, liberating coup. By now, he’s probably good enough to rival Maria.

  It’s past noon when Lili finally begins stirring. Yawning and stretching, she emerges with messy hair and swollen eyes from her crumpled sheets. He’s
already had breakfast, coffee, and two cigarettes (he tries to be disciplined about his smoking and only allows himself one on weekdays, two on weekends). He’s already gone through the new issue of Architectural Digest, and a catalog of furniture sent to him by a warehouse in New Jersey.

  Lili comes out to greet him. She stands in the doorway, smiles and yawns. Always a restless sleeper, she’s managed to un-tuck the bed Mona prepared for her, and has slept the last few hours with her cheek directly on the leather couch. He can see a line on her skin from the edge of the sheet.

  He offers her orange juice, but to his surprise she wants coffee instead. She comes back with a steaming cup, and comments on how good the French Roast is. It sounds more like a question than a statement, and she pauses, as if awaiting his reply. Setting her mug down on the table, she pulls Mona’s bathrobe tighter around her body, and adjusts the belt. With her left hand, she brushes the hair out of her eyes. Then she grabs her coffee mug again. She smiles. She seems reluctant to sit down with him. She probably thinks there’s another lecture coming on. It upsets him to realize, she’s actually afraid of him.

  “It’s a nice day out,” he says. “What do you say you eat some breakfast, and then we go to the park? We haven’t had a proper walk together in months.”

  Her face relaxes a bit.

  He suggests a peace offering:

  “We could get pizza, then ice cream.”

  She smiles and nods, her eyes now bright with sunshine.

  It’s a beautiful day, a bit hot in the park, but neither of them minds it. They end up having ice cream first. Dripping cups of Mister Softee, which he doesn’t really enjoy, but agrees to buy to please her. They sit on the grass, and he studies her appearance, trying to guess from her face just what kind of trouble she’s in.

  There are no clues in her face. She looks beautiful, still a bit puffy from sleep, with the sun in her hair, and ice cream dripping down her chin. He reaches over and wipes it off with his napkin. She smiles, knowing how he can’t suffer a mess, and for a moment, her face takes on that familiar expression, her mother’s expression from when she was young, before life and kids, and marriage, and this country made her bitter. After all these years, when memories of Maria sneak up on him, it still shocks him, in a way that is pleasant and painful all at once.