Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel

by Gary Shteyngart

  So I guess the other major thing is that I saw my dad and it was weird, but at the same time it kind of healed my heart a little. He really has no patients anymore, so he asked Sally if he could help out in one of the LNWI camps in the parks and she sent him to Tompkins Square, and then Sally sort of “arranged” that we should meet there. She always has to play the role of the good daughter bringing the family together.

  It was raining so hard all of a sudden, all the food on the dinner tables was completely washed away and someone had donated three hams, so people were crying. This old woman died last week of a heart attack and no ambulances will even come down there anymore and plus no one has Healthcare vouchers. So it was like Dad to the rescue. He spent a whole afternoon just giving free checkups in the tents. And at first David would like bark orders at him, saying this is a priority or that’s a priority, but Dad would just look at him quietly, the same way he stares at me, only without saying anything. And David was like okaaaay. Dad brought all his medical stuff with him, and it was so strange to just see him as this little old ha ra buh gee walking through the park, carrying this huge brown leather bag mommy got him for his 60th birthday, so harmless and innocent, and I was thinking THIS is the man who ruined my life?

  He said there was serious malnutrition going on, so we went to the new H-Mart on Second Ave and we got all this stuff that wouldn’t spoil, like 1,000 ddok and packets of kim (the not so good kind) and those nori crackers by like the wagonload and we brought it all back to the park in a cab. It was weird because I used to be so ashamed of having all that food in my lunchbox in kindergarten and now we’re feeding it to poor Americans. It was fun to go shopping with dad, he never yelled at me once. And you know how great he is around poor patients. He even played with all the children in the Activities tent the way he plays with Myong-hee when we’re in CA, pretending he’s a plane flying back to Seoul and she climbs on board and then she’s strapped in, and then the meal is served (more ddok!) and then when it comes to a landing he says, “Thank you for flying Air Uncle. Make sure you have ALL personal belongings, okay?” He and David talked about scripture for like ten hours, and I could tell David was impressed by my dad just spouting Romans and all that crap, about how helping LNWIs is like “going unto Jerusalem to minister unto the saints,” and I liked that saying because it made David and all these poor people sound like saints, much better than the stuck-up Media jerks Lenny hangs around with. They had to get out all the spare tarps to protect the leftover Fourth of July corn from the rain, and David was trying to get other people to help him, but my dad was this obstanate little bulldog and he refused any help and it was just him and David doing all the work, like two reliable strong men, even though I was worried Dad would catch a cold.

  It’s weird but I almost thought that maybe this could be my family, without mom or Sally. Maybe I should have been born a guy, huh? I know you don’t like David and the whole Aziz’s Army, but after they finished, my dad told me he thought David was really smart and that it was a shame what this country was doing to men like him, sending him to Venezuela and then not giving him his bonus or Healthcare.

  I have to say I think in some ways my dad has more in common with David than with Lenny. It’s like because our dads grew up in Korea after the war they know what it’s like to not have anything and how to survive off their smarts. Anyway, I was really worried Dad would bring up Lenny, and at one point I thought he was about to, because we were all alone and he really changes when we’re alone, the mask just drops off and it’s all about how I’ve failed him and mom, but all he said was “How are you, Eunice?”

  And I almost freaking started to cry, because he never asked me that in my life. I was just like, “Uh-huh, fine, uh-huh,” and then it was like I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I was happy or just scared because it seemed so final for him to ask me that, like he’d never see me again. I wondered what he would do if I just threw my arms around him. I get so scared whenever I have to leave my parent’s house to go away for a while, because he always attacks me at the last minute, he always says something terrible in the car on the way to the airport, but I also wonder if secretly he just wants to have some kind of contact with me before I fly off and abandon him for someone like Lenny. That’s how it felt when we were walking out of the park and I just blurted out, “Bye, Daddy, I love you,” and I ran down to our apartment and thank god Lenny wasn’t there because I bawled for three hours until he came home for dinner and I really didn’t want to spend any time with him that night.

  Anyway, I don’t want to think about this too much, because it depresses me. What’s new with you, my little churro frito? Did your father get his plunger biz back? How was the vag rejuv? Fuck-tard Gopher? I miss you more and more each day we’re apart. Oh, my mom STILL won’t respond to my messages. It’s like punishment for dating Lenny. Maybe I should bring my new seventy-year-old friend Joshie GOLDMAN to church! Ha ha.

  JULY 22

  GRILLBITCH TO EUNI-TARD:

  Dear Precious Panda,

  I really can’t talk right now. We can’t find my dad. He had gone to the factory and that’s the last GlobalTrace of him I had on my äppärät. We thought he had snuck into the building even though it’s surrounded by National Guards and there are LNWIs inside doing whatever they want. Mommy and I tried to get through the checkpoint but they wouldn’t let us and when my mom started hollering at one of the soldiers he punched her. We’re home and I’m changing the compresses on her now, because her eye is swollen and she won’t go to the hospital. We don’t know what’s happening anymore. Some Media guy Pervaiz Silverblatt of the Levy Report is streaming that there’s a fire at the factory, but I’ve never heard of him. I’m sorry I’m a bad friend and can’t help you with your problems right now. You have to be strong and do whatever you have to do for your family.

  EUNI-TARD: Sally, did you hear what’s happening in California? To the Kangs?

  SALLYSTAR: Ask your boyfriend.

  EUNI-TARD: What?

  SALLYSTAR: Ask him about Wapachung Contingency.

  EUNI-TARD: I don’t get it.

  SALLYSTAR: Don’t worry about it.

  EUNI-TARD: Fuck you, Sally. Why do you have to be like that? What has Lenny ever done to you or to mom? And FYI Lenny doesn’t work for Wapachung Whatever, he works for Post Human Services. I met his boss and he’s really nice. It’s just a company that helps people look younger and live longer.

  SALLYSTAR: Sounds pretty egotistical.

  EUNI-TARD: Right, because only you and dad can be saints ministering unto Jerusalem.

  SALLYSTAR: Huh?

  EUNI-TARD: Look it up, it’s in your bible. You probably have it highlighted in twenty different colors. Guess what? I’ve been helping too, Sally. I’ve been at the park the last few weeks. And I’ve become friends with David who thinks you’re just a spoiled little Barnard girl.

  SALLYSTAR: How much longer are you going to go on just being a little ball of anger, Eunice? One day your looks are going to fade and all these stupid old white men won’t be chasing after you and then what?

  EUNI-TARD: Nice, Sally. Well, at least your being honest for the first time in your life.

  SALLYSTAR: I’m sorry, Eunice.

  SALLYSTAR: Eunice? I’m sorry.

  EUNI-TARD: I have to go see David in the park. I’m getting them Men’s Biomultiples because they need to be strong in case there’s an attack.

  SALLYSTAR: Okay. I love you.

  EUNI-TARD: Sure.

  SALLYSTAR: Eunice!

  EUNI-TARD: I know you do.

  JULY 24

  AZIZARMY-INFO TO EUNI-TARD:

  Hi, Eunice. Good meeting your dad and talking to him. He reminds me of you, in the sense that you’re both hardcore. I’m glad you said being together at Tompkins Square Nation has brought you closer. Seeing your dad made me miss mine. When we were growing up they were even tougher on us than they had to be and that means their kids became stronger than they ha
d to be. OBSERVATION: You bitch and whine a lot, Eunice, that’s your SOP, but you’re still a very strong woman, scary strong sometimes. Use that strength for good. Move on.

  It is COLD with the rain tonight. Everyone’s asleep and the only sound is Marisol’s little girl Anna singing old R&B by the water fountain. I’m worried about Force Protection. My MPs say there’s no ARA activity around the park perimeter, which doesn’t feel right for a Friday. I’m going to send a unit downrange to the Laundromat on St. Mark’s. Maybe the Bipartisans see the writing on the wall. Maybe we really are going to get our Venezuela bonuses this time.

  OBSERVATION: You’re very lucky overall, Eunice, you know that? It would be helpful if you were here with me right now so that we could talk in the quiet of the tent (I tried to verbal you, but you’re probably asleep) and it would be just like in college all over again, only no one at Austin was as pretty as you. FYI, Chauncey at Malnutrition says we need 20 cans of mosquito repellent and if we get a 100 more avocado and crabmeat units from H-mart that would really up our nutritional profile.

  Hope you’re staying dry and that your mind and body are in a good place. Don’t give in to High Net Worth thinking this week. Perform useful tasks that your dad would be proud of. But also: Relax a little. Whatever happens, I got your back.

  David

  THE RUPTURE

  FROM THE DIARIES OF LENNY ABRAMOV

  JULY 29

  Dear Diary,

  Grace and Vishnu had their pregnancy-announcing party on Staten Island. On the way to the ferry terminal, Euny and I saw a demonstration, an old-school protest march down Delancey Street and toward the broken superstructure of the Williamsburg Bridge. It was sanctioned by the Restoration Authority, or so it seemed, the marchers freely chanting and waving misspelled signs demanding better housing: “Peeple power!” “Houssing is a human right.” “Don’t throw us off the peir.” “Burn all Credit Pole!” “I am no a grasshopper, huevón!” “Don call me ant!” They were chanting in Spanish and Chinese, their accents jamming the ear, so many strong languages vying to push their way into our lackadaisical native one. There were small Fujianese men, big-backed Latina mothers, and, sticking out of the fray, gangly white Media people trying to stream about their own problems with condo down payments and imperious co-op boards. “We are being overruled by real estate!” the more erudite marchers shouted. “No more threats of deportation! Boo! Space for LGBT youth is not for sale! In unity there is power! Take back our city! No justice! No peace!” Their cacophony calmed me. If there could still be marches like this, if people could still concern themselves with things like better housing for transgendered youth, then maybe we weren’t finished as a nation just yet. I considered teening Nettie Fine the good news, but was preoccupied by the travails of just getting to Staten Island. The National Guard troops at the ferry terminal checkpoints weren’t Wapachung Contingency according to my äppärät, so we submitted to the usual half-hour “Deny and Imply” humiliations like everyone else.

  Grace and Vishnu lived on one floor of a Shingle Style manse in the hipster St. George neighborhood, the house’s Doric columns declaring an overbearing historicity, the turret providing comic relief, stained-glass windows a pretty kind of kitsch, the rest of it sea-weathered and confident, a late-nineteenth-century indigenous form built on an island at a tiny remove from what was then becoming the most important city in the most important country in the world.

  They weren’t rich, my Vishnu and Grace—they had bought the house for almost nothing two years ago, when the last crisis was hitting its peak—and the place was already a mess, even without the impending baby, a flurry of broken Shaker furniture that Vishnu would never find the time to fix, and truly smelly books from another lifetime he would never read. Vishnu was out on the back porch grilling tofu and turning over vegetables. The porch deck elevated their apartment beyond the mundane, a full view of downtown Manhattan rising through the midsummer heat, the skyline looking tired, worn, in need of a bath. Vishnu and I did the Nee-gro slap and hug. I hovered around my friend, chatting him up with great care like I would a woman at a bar when I was young and single, while Eunice stood timidly in the distance, a glass of Pinot something-or-other tight in her fist.

  CrisisNet: CREDIT MARKET DEBT EXCEEDS 100 TRILLION NORTHERN EURO BENCHMARK.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. Vishnu gazed distractedly into the middle distance, while a root vegetable fell between the slats of the grill and issued a mild report.

  The deck began to fill up. There was Noah, looking flushed and summer-weary but ready to emcee the announcement of Vishnu and Grace’s little girl soon to come, fully indebted, into our strange new world, and Noah’s girlfriend, Amy Greenberg, the comic relief, streaming hard on her “Muffintop Hour,” filled with bursts of spasmodic laughter and not-so-subtle anger at the fact that Noah wasn’t planning to get her pregnant, that all she had was her hard-driven career.

  My friends. My dear ones. We chatted in the typically funny-sad way of people in their very late thirties about the things that used to make us young as Amy passed around a real joint, seedless and moist, the kind that only Media people get. I tried to get Eunice involved, but she mostly stayed by the edge of the deck with her äppärät, her stunning cocktail dress like something out of an old movie, the haughty princess no one can understand but one man.

  Noah came over to Eunice and started charming her retro (“How ya doin’, little lady?”), and I could see her mouth turning to form little syllables of understanding and encouragement, a terminal blush spreading like a rash across the gloss of her neck, but she spoke too quietly for me to hear her over the spitting din of vegetables being grilled black, the communal laughter of old friends.

  More people showed up: Grace’s Jewish and Indian co-workers, Retail women-lawyers who effortlessly switched from friendly to stern, quiet to volatile; Vishnu’s summer-pretty exes, who still kept in touch because he was so swell a guy; and a bunch of people who went to NYU with us, mostly slick Credit dudes, one with a fashionable Mohawk and pearl earring who was trying to match Noah in pitch and importance.

  I had a quick succession of vodka shots with Noah, who, turning off his äppärät, confided in me that Grace’s pregnancy was “totally making [him] nervous,” that he didn’t know what to do with himself next, and that his alcoholism, while charming to most, was starting to worry Amy Greenberg. “Do what feels right,” I glibly told him, advice from an era when the first Boeing Dreamliner, still flying under the American flag, lifted off the soil and broke the leaden Seattle skies.

  “But nothing feels right anymore,” Noah set me straight, his eyes lazily scanning Eunice’s tight form. I poured him a bigger shot, vodka overflowing and moistening my grill-blackened fingers. I was happy that at least he wasn’t talking politics today, happy and a little surprised. We drank and let the passing joint add a tasty green humidity to our uncertain moods, danger pulsing behind my cornea, yet the field of vision bright and clear as far as my affections were concerned. If I could have my friends and my Eunice forever and ever I would be fine.

  A fork clanged against a champagne glass, the only nonplastic glass in the couple’s possession. Noah was about to make his well-rehearsed “impromptu” speech. Vishnu and Grace stood in our midst, and my sympathies and love for them flowed in unabashed waves. How beautiful she looked in her featureless white peasant top and nontransparent jeans, that kind, awkward goose of a woman, and Vishnu, his dark features growing ever more Hebraic under the weight of upcoming responsibilities (truly our two races are uniquely primed for reproduction), his wardrobe more calm and collected, the youthful SUK DIK crap replaced by slacks of no vintage and a standard-issue “Rubenstein Must Die Slowly” T-shirt. Grace and Vishnu, my two adults.

  Noah spoke, and although I thought I was going to hate his words, the surface nature of them, that always-streaming quality that Media people are unable to correct for, I didn’t. “I love this Nee-gro,” he said pointing to Vishnu, “and this her
e bride of Nee-gro, and I think they are the only people who should be giving birth, the only peeps qualified to pop one out.”

  “Right on!” we call-and-responded.

  “The only peeps sure of themselves enough so that, come what may, the child will be loved and cared for and sheltered. Because they’re good people. I know folks say that a lot—‘They’re good peeps, yo’—but there’s the kind of plastic good, the kind of easy ‘good’ any of us can generate, and then there’s this other, deep thing that is so hard for us to find anymore. Consistency. Day-to-day. Moving on. Taking stock. Never exploding. Channeling it all, that anger, that huge anger about what’s happened to us as a people, channeling it into whatever-the-fuck. Keeping it away from the children, that’s all I’m going to say.”

  Eunice was appraising Noah with warm eyes, unconsciously closing her fingers around her äppärät and the pulsing AssLuxury in front of her. I thought Noah was finished speaking, but now he had to make some jokes to balance out the fact that we all loved Grace and Vishnu yet were immensely scared for them and their two-months-in-the-oven undertaking, and Amy had to laugh at the jokes, and we all had to follow suit and laugh—which was fine.

  The joint returned, passed by a slender, unfamiliar woman’s hand, and I toked harshly from it. I settled into a memory of being maybe fourteen and passing by one of those then newly built NYU dormitories on First or Second Avenue, those multi-colored blobs with some kind of chicken-wing-type modernity pointedly hanging off the roof, and there were these smartly dressed girls just being young out by the building’s lobby, and they smiled in tandem as I passed—not in jest, but because I was a normal-looking guy and it was a brilliant summer day, and we were all alive. I remember how happy I was (I decided to attend NYU on the spot), but how, after I had walked half a block away, I realized they were going to die and I was going to die and that the final result—nonexistence, erasure, none of this mattering in that “longest” of runs—would never appease me, never allow me to enjoy fully the happiness of the friends I suspected I would one day acquire, friends like these people in front of me, celebrating an upcoming birth, laughing and drinking, passing into a new generation with their connectivity and decency intact, even as each year brought closer the unthinkable, those waking hours that began at nine post meridian and ended at three in the morning, those pulsing, mosquito-bitten hours of dread. How far I had come from my parents, born in a country built on corpses, how far I had come from their endless anxiety—oh, the blind luck of it all! And yet how little I had traveled away from them, the inability to grasp the present moment, to grab Grace by the shoulders and say, “Your happiness is mine.”