Super Sad True Love Story

knees, but he said he wanted to be honest. I told him in America people liked to ignore their weak points and to stress their incredible accomplishments. Now that I think about it, I felt guilty about being born in Queens and having lots of nutritious food on my plate, food that allowed me to grow to a semi-normal height of five feet and nine inches, whereas my father had barely scraped the five-and-a-half-foot mark. It was he, the athlete, not I, the soft and stationary one, who needed those extra inches to sail the basketball past some Brazilian pituitary giant.

The familiar cry of my mother resounded downstairs: “Lyonya, gotovo!” (“Lenny, dinner is ready!”)

Down in the dining room, with the shiny Romanian furniture the Abramovs had imported from their Moscow apartment (the totality of it could be squeezed into one small American room), the table was laid out in the hospitable Russian manner, with everything from four different kinds of piquant salami to a plate of chewy tongue to every little fish that ever inhabited the Baltic Sea, not to mention the sacred dash of black caviar. Eunice sat, Queen Esther-like in her Orthodox getup, at the ceremonial end of the table, upon a fluffed-up Passover pillow, frowning at the attention, unsure how to deal with the strange currents of love and its opposite that circulated in the fish- smelling air. My parents sat down, and my father proposed a seasonal toast in English: “To the Creator, who created America, the land of free, and who give us Rubenstein, who kill Arab, and to love which is blooming in such times between my son and Yooo-neee-kay, who [big wink to Eunice] will be victorious, like Sparta over Athens, and to the summer, which is most conducive season to love, although some may say spring…”

While he went on in his booming voice, a vodka shot glass of some weird garage-sale provenance shaking in his troubled hand, my mother, bored, leaned over to me and said: “Kstati, u tvoei Eunice ochen’ krasivye zuby. Mozhet byt’ ty zhenishsya?” (“By the way, your Eunice has very pretty teeth. Maybe you will marry?”)

I could see Eunice’s mind absorbing the basics of my father’s speech (Arabs-bad; Jews-good; Chinese Central Banker-possibly okay; America-always number one in his heart), while gauging the intent on my mother’s face as she spoke to me in Russian. Eunice’s mind moved so quickly through feelings and ideas, but the fear on her face reflected a life rushing by faster than she could make sense of it.

The toast put to rest, unraveled in some happy political mumbling, we shoveled in the food without reservation, all of us from countries historically strangled by starvation, none of us strangers to salt and brine. “Eunice,” my mother said, “perhaps you can answer for me this. Who is Lenny by profession? I never can figure out. He went to NYU business school. So he is… businessman?”

“Mama,” I said, letting out some air, “please.”

“I am talking to Eunice,” my mother said. “Girl talk.”

I had never seen Eunice’s face so serious, even as the tail end of a Baltic sardine disappeared between her glossy lips. I wondered what she might say. “Lenny does very important work,” she told my mother. “It’s, I think, like, medicine. He helps people live forever.”

My father’s fist slammed the dining table, not hard enough to break the Romanian contraption, but enough to make me draw into myself, enough to make me worry that he might hurt me. “Impossible!” my father cried. “It break every law of physics and biology, for one. For two, immoral, against God. Tphoo! I would not want such thing.”

“Work is work,” my mother said. “If stupid rich American want to live forever and Lenny make money, why you care?” She waved her hand at my father. “Stupid,” she said.

“Yes, but how Lenny knows about medicine?” My father lit up, brandishing a fork capped by a marinated mushroom. “He never study in high school. What is his weighted average? Eighty-six point eight nine four.”

“NYU Stern Business School rated number eleven for marketing, which was Lenny specialization,” my mother reminded him, and I warmed to her defense of me. They took turns attacking and defending me, as if each wanted to siphon off only so much of my love, while the other could stab at the crusted-over wounds. My mother turned to Eunice. “So Lenny tell us you speak perfect Italian,” she said.

Eunice blushed some more. “No,” she said, lowering her eyes and cupping her knees. “I’m forgetting everything. The irregular verbs.”

“Lenny spend one year in Italy,” my father said. “We come to visit him. Nothing! Bleh-bleh-bleh. Bleh-bleh-bleh.” He moved his body as if to imitate my walking through the Roman streets while trying to talk to the natives.

“You are liar, Boris,” my mother said casually. “He bought us beautiful tomato in market Piazza Vittorio. He brought down price. Three euro.”

“But tomato is so simple!” my father said. “In Russian pomidor, in Italian pomodoro. Even I know such thing! If he maybe negotiate for us cucumber or squash…”

“Zatknis’ uzhe, Borya” (“Shut up already, Boris”), my mother said. She readjusted her summer blouse and bored her eyes into mine. “Lenny, neighbor Mr. Vida show us you appear on stream ‘101 People We Need to Feel Sorry For.’ Why do you do it? This dick-sucking boy, he makes fun of you. He says you are fat and stupid and old. You don’t eat good food and you do not have profession and your Fuckability rankings are very low. Also he says tebya ponizili [‘you have been demoted’] at the company. Papa and I are very sad about this.”

My father looked away in some shame, while I curled and uncurled my toes beneath the table. So this was at the heart of their anger with me. I had told them so many times not to look at any streams or data about me. I was a private person with my own little world. I lived in a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. I had just learned to FAC. Why couldn’t they find a better use for their retirement years than this painful scrutiny of their only child? Why did they stalk me with their tomatoes and high-school averages and “Who are you by profession?” logic?

And then I heard Eunice speak, her straightforward American English ringing against the smallness of our house. “I told him not to appear in it too,” she said. “And he won’t anymore. You won’t, right, Lenny? You’re so good and smart, why do you need to do it?”

“Exactly,” my mother said. “Exactly, Eunice.”

I did not tell them that I had regained my desk. I did not say anything. I leaned back and watched the two women in my life look across a glossy Romanian table groaning beneath a plastic cover and twenty gallons of mayonnaise and canned fish. They were eyeing each other with a placid understanding. Sometimes mothers and girlfriends compete against one another, but that has never been my experience. It is quite easy for two smart women, no matter what the gap in their ages and backgrounds, to come to a complete agreement about me. This child, they seemed to be saying…

This child still needs to be brought up.

12 TEMPERANCE, CHARITY, FAITH, HOPE

FROM THE GLOBALTEENS ACCOUNT OF EUNICE PARK

JUNE 25

EUNI-TARD TO GRILLBITCH:

Hi Precious Pony,

Sup, meathole? Oh, man. Or, “oy, man,” as my Jewish boyfriend would say. I’m feeling so weird these days. Wish you could fly over and we could go to Padma and get our hair done. Mine is getting so long and freaky looking. Ugh. Maybe I should get one of those ajumma perms like our moms have, you just blow dry them in the morning and they settle into a helmet. I’m also getting those famous ajumma hips too! Great, huh? I look like my aunt Suewon crossed with a duck. And my ass is SO FUCKING HUGE it’s getting bigger than Lenny’s, which is one of those crushed middle-aged asses, not to gross you out again. See, we’re perfect for each other! Just call me Fatty