Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story

I went on in that vein for a while, careful to be nonpolitical, hewing to my parents’ FoxLiberty-Prime conservatism. Sometimes when I spoke of Wapachung Contingency, Sally would look at me with ill-concealed annoyance, as if she was not overly enamored of my employer, but even in her displeasure she was graceful and mild, and I wanted to get rid of her parents and talk directly to her, debate her in a chummy, casual way. “Of course,” I was saying to her father, “I am not a doctor, a man of science, in the way that you are, sir. What I try to do is synthesize commerce and-”

Dr. Park pointed his index finger at my foot, the white flesh peeking out from within the hole of my sock like a shameful bit of burlesque. “I see,” he said, “that you have either a tissue or bone growth at the base of your metatarsophalangeal joint. Maybe the beginning of a bunion. You should buy different footwear, shoes that don’t crowd the toes. This is a real pathology that you should take care of, because over time your only option will be surgery.” He turned toward Eunice, who nodded.

“New shoes,” she said.

“Take care of each other in difficult time,” Mrs. Park said. “Good roommates, okay?”

“Thank you,” I said. I wanted to return to my career, to how I was going to help Eunice weather the uncertainty ahead, but the screen over the ticket window had just dropped shut. “Um.”

Mrs. Park took out an old äppärät and set it on the table between a newly arrived dish of baby ferns and one of salted beef. “Look,” she said to Eunice and Sally. “Video of Myong-hee her mother just sent.” To me she said: “Cousin from Topanga.”

An Asian girl of no more than three ran toward the camera against a crowded background of cheap Californian townhouses and an aquamarine pool. She was wearing a bathing suit festooned with rubber daisies and wore a profoundly genuine smile across her broad face. “Hi, Eunice Emo . Hi, Sally Emo ,” she shouted at the screen. “I miss you, Eunice Emo ,” the girl yelled, showing us the full array of her nubby teeth.

“Look,” Mrs. Park said. “She has a little bit of rice on top her eye.” There was a grain of something above her brow. Everyone laughed, Dr. Park included, who said a few words in Korean, the first approving words of the evening, the first time his jaw had been unclenched, the war anthem silenced, the forward battalion called to barracks. Eunice was wiping her eyes, and I realized she wasn’t laughing. She uncrossed her legs, sprang from the table in one motion, and ran from the room in bare feet. I started to get up to follow her, but Mrs. Park only said: “She miss her cousin in California. Don’t worry.”

But I knew it wasn’t just the cute girl on the screen that had made Eunice cry. It was her father laughing, being kind, the family momentarily loving and intact-a cruel side trip into the impossible, an alternate history. The dinner was over. The waiters were clearing the table with resignation and without a word. I knew that, according to tradition, I had to allow Dr. Park to pay for the meal, but I went into my äppärät and transferred him three hundred yuan, the total of the bill, out of an unnamed account. I did not want his money. Even if my dreams were realized and I would marry Eunice someday, Dr. Park would always remain to me a stranger. After thirty-nine years of being alive, I had forgiven my own parents for not knowing how to care for a child, but that was the depth of my forgiveness.

EUNI-TARD TO CHUNG.WON.PARK

Mom, you haven’t written me back in a while. Are you still mad about Lenny? Stop worrying about the Mystery, okay? Worry about Sally instead. You have to watch her weight. Don’t let her order “peejah.” Make only food with lots of vegetables. I’m going to buy her some nice summer shoes from FootsieGalore, the kind she can wear to interviews too.

I’m too busy looking for Retail jobs to take the LSAT prep right now, but definately next summer. The miscellaneous charge on AlliedCVS must be this new “minimum aggregate APR” they’re charging these days. It means we’ll have to pay a little less for the monthly charge but we have to pay this new charge immediately or it gets tacked on to the principal, which then turns into a maximum aggregate, which will probably mean another six thousand or more in the next two billing cycles. I think it’s time to switch out of AlliedWaste anyway and LandOLakes is running some special promotional rates this month although you have to borrow an extra ten thousand just to “switch in.” I guess we should at least “do the math” and check it out.

EUNI-TARD TO GRILLBITCH:

Dear Precious Pony,

Hello out there in TV land! Oy. I guess I’ve been streaming too many old shows with Lenny. Weird. So now my mom is mad at me too. Dinner with la famiglia was a disaster, as you rightfully predicted. Why on earth did Lenny think he could charm my parents? You know, he is so FULL of himself sometimes. He has this American white guy thing where life is always fair in the end, and nice guys are respected for being nice, and everything is just HONKY-dory (get it?). He went on and on about how I can form sentences and how I always talk about taking care of Sally, and meanwhile my father is just flexing his fist under the table. Believe me, that flexed fist was all Sally and I could think about while old Len went on his little dietribe.

I know his heart is in the right place. It’s always in the right place. But after a while, who cares, right? How can he not understand me? It’s like he doesn’t take time to put two and two together. He promised he would read less and spend more time taking care of our apartment, but his head is all caught up in these texts. I looked up War and Peace and it’s about this guy Pierre who fights in France, and all this terrible stuff happens to him, but in the end because of his charm he gets to be with this girl he really loves, and who really loves him even though she cheated on him. That’s Lenny’s view on life in a nutshell, that in the end niceness and smartness always win.

But the worst was my mother. She just went OFF on me. Like, yeh, nuh moo heh ta. You could do so much better. He’s old, he’s unattractive, his skin looks unhealthy, he’s got bad feet, he’s not as tall as you said he was, he makes 25,000 yuan a month. If you want to date someone older, there’s this gemologist from Palisades who makes close to a million a year and daddy says the Post Human place Lenny works for is a total scam and is going to fall apart completely. Mom kept teening me “Keep options open, keep options open.”

I tried not to be hurt, but it was impossible. It’s like in the same way Lenny doesn’t see me, they don’t see HIM. To them he’s just this unattractive, not-rich person with a hole in his sock (I thought I was honestly going to kill him for that).

But then we went home and I got that sucky message from my mom and then I just started to feel like I loved Lenny even more. Like the more she detested him, the more I loved him. He was so tired from the dinner and the stupid church service, he just conked out and fell asleep on the couch and he even snored like he never does. He had obviously put so much of himself out there, my sweet, caring tuna-brain, he had tried so hard as he does to be nice to my parents and to defend me against my asswipe of a dad, and it had just taken everything out of him. And I thought, if someone can’t recognize what a good man he is then what good are they to me? I guess what I’m saying is I’m not as turned off by Lenny’s vulnerabilities anymore and I have my cuh-ragee mom to thank for that epiphany. That’s the thing with Lenny, if you spend time with him you realize he’s just very yamjanae. I think that’s a very Korean thing, to be able to sense someone so sweet and gentle and appreciate him for who he is.