Miroslav Penkov - East of the West

“Tell her I’m here,” I say, and my wife lets me know there is another twenty minutes on the diving lesson. “Have a seat,” she says, “have another Dr.”

“John Martin,” I say, but as before, she’s already drifting away. I find a chair with a broken leg far from the pool and pour some vodka into the soda can. Then I watch Buddy, flipping steaks with one hand and with the other holding the cell phone to his mouth like a walkie-talkie. He drops a chunk of hamburger meat to the dog and the dog pushes the chunk with its muzzle, licks it and refuses to eat. I could go for a burger right about now. Most likely John Martin, too, could go for a burger, out in the truck. I drink more and wait for the lesson to be over, for my daughter to reemerge from the deep. She does that at last. My wife helps her out of the pool and the instructor removes the oxygen tank from her back. I would never make my daughter carry anything of such weight. Then my wife tells Elli something and Elli looks about and sees me in the corner. She runs to me and, one hundred words a minute, asks if I saw her scuba diving, with a tank and all, down there in the pool, breathing underwater like a mermaid, like a real mermaid, in the pool.

“Elli, Elli, Elli,” I say. “Slow down, baby,” I say. “Na bulgarski, taté . Tell me all this, but in Bulgarian.”

I keep drinking while Elli is changing up in her room, while my wife is packing her a bag for the weekend, because it is just so hard to have the bag packed already. I watch the diving instructor teach a freckled woman how to suck air through a snorkel. Then I watch Buddy by the grill in his flip-flops, dry now, with his fur all bristly, forking meats, taking their temperature with a stick, talking to the dog in his stupid accented English. I feel so utterly out of place here, so stranded I can’t even hate him right. I can’t even envy him properly for all the things he has that I don’t. This is not the way I imagined it. This life. Sometimes, at night, long after John Martin has gone to bed, I sit on his back porch and I drink his beers and chuck empty cans at the dark and I wonder — this everything. Is it worth staying?

Then Elli emerges, with a bag in her hand.

“I’m ready,” she says. Buddy comes for a good-bye and she gives him a kiss on the lips. He asks me if I want some steak and I tell him I’d already had plenty of steaks today — for breakfast, for lunch, for an afternoon snack — all steaks, rare, medium, well done. Elli pets the dog and it licks her fingers while my wife whispers something in her ear, all the while watching me with a serious face. “Michael,” she tells me, though she knows this is not how my name should sound. “Take good care of her.” As if such instructions are ever needed.

By the time we walk out, the sun is slipping behind the scorched earthline. John Martin pushes himself off the truck with a dusty boot and shuts the hood closed. I tell Elli to get in, because she’ll be riding between us, and as I climb in I see that John hasn’t touched any more beers from the cooler, that they are all floating like dead fish in what was once ice.

“Jesus Christ, John,” I say. “I’m really sorry for the wait.”

“It’s okay, man,” he says and closes his door gently. “Hi, beautiful,” he tells Elli. He tousles her wet hair. “Hi, Princess.”

II.

We came to the U.S. seven years ago. Maya, the baby and I — despite the slim chances — proud winners of green cards. I submitted our lottery applications on the day Elli was born. Ten months later, we passed the interview at the embassy, and two weeks after Elli turned one we flew to New York City. There was very little fear when we left Sofia. We figured if we had to be poor — and we were, very, both of us English teachers at neighborhood schools — we might as well be poor in America. We left in hopes of a better life, I suppose — not for us, but for the baby. And I suppose a better life is what we got. Certainly not me, but the baby. Perhaps. And, as much as I hate to admit it, Maya as well.

Maya’s first cousin had already lived in New York for fifteen years and he let us stay at his place — a one bedroom in Bronx — until we rented our own one bedroom above his one bedroom.

The cousin helped me get a job as a cashier at a Russian convenience store during the days and another at night, as a 7-Eleven clerk, three times a week. I worked like this for four months until, one morning, I came home after a long shift with a high fever and abdominal pain so sharp, I cried louder than the baby. Five hours later I lay in a hospital room without an appendix. The operation cost us twenty-five thousand, out of which we could pay zero. We decided to save up for a few months, buy tickets to Bulgaria and vamoose. But while Maya had been waiting in the hospital, she had, entirely by accident, as these things are prone to happen, overheard a Bulgarian name mispronounced over the intercom. She’d seen a doctor rush down the hallway and chased him to the elevator. She’d read his tag. And lo and behold … Buddy Milanov, M.D.

For months I thought of Buddy as my Christ, my God-sent Savior: he called insurance companies for us, filed claims on our behalf and finally, because we were so officially poor, managed to get ninety percent of our hospital fees remitted. We made him Elli’s godfather. We invited him for musaka on the weekends. We even hiked up our skirts so he could bend us properly over the kitchen counter. With the baby in the room.

After I walked in on them, Maya moved on the offensive. She blamed me for this, and that, and for other things. A week of fighting later, she had already taken Elli to Buddy’s apartment — overlooking the river, with plenty of rooms and a granite counter in the kitchen.

I decided to kill Buddy. I quit my night job so I could wait for him outside the hospital with a knife in my pocket. I waited for a week, watching him call cab after cab, until it became clear I’m not, alas, a real man from the Balkans. So like a slug I began to befriend him again. Buddy, my friend, what’s going on, pal? Let bygones be bygones. I knew that if I could talk to Maya, reason with her over time, she would undoubtedly come home with me.

Five years went by. Last March my wife informed me that Buddy had found a job in some clinic in Texas and that they were all moving. They would graciously pay for my plane tickets, twice a year, so I could come down and visit Elli at dates of my convenience.

I decided it was time to kill Buddy again. I sharpened the knife, polished its thick, wooden handle. Then I poured myself some vodka and made a tomato salad with too much vinegar and a lot of onions and ate the salad and drank the vodka, and sharpened the knife. I stared at my Seiko until the phone rang, eight in the evening.

“Taté,” Elli said on the other side, “we just rode an airplane.” And after, when I hung up, I could not breathe, could not move, knowing she was there and I here. I could not imagine where she was. I could not see the things she saw, did not understand what she meant by a huge sky and no tall trees. After I finished the bottle I called my mother back home, in Bulgaria.

She did not recognize my voice right away.

“Mother,” I said, “I’m moving to Texas.”

“Good for you,” she said. “Are you thinking …” she said, “are you considering …”

I told her I was not. I had no money, no time for trips to Bulgaria.

“Of course,” she said. “Money and time. I know how it is.”

III.

We’re kicking the ball in John Martin’s backyard, catching the last sun of the day, while he sways in his rocker — one hand holding a beer, the other one swatting mosquitoes. The rocker creaks and every now and then there is the sound of crushed metal, of his boots knocking on the planks, as he reaches over for a new can from the cooler.