Our Country Friends Read online

  “Also,” Senderovsky continued, “she told me that no one should sit in the front seat. For distancing purposes.”

  “Oh, the hell with that,” Ed said, opening the front passenger door. “People are really going overboard with this thing. I’ll crouch down when we get to the house.” The car filled with the aroma of fresh tobacco, which made Senderovsky wistful for a smoke. Ed placed a hand on the glove compartment, bracing himself for the landowner’s torque. “What happened there?” He pointed at the dangling side mirror.

  “The garage bays are too narrow,” Senderovsky said. Seconds had passed, but the train station was already far behind them, and they were racing, swerving, past the skeleton of what, in three months’ time, would become a farm stand. “I ought to have them widened.”

  “What’s that Russian saying about incompetent people trying to pass the blame?”

  Senderovsky laughed. “ ‘A bad dancer is bothered by his balls.’ ”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Would you mind if we get some groceries? All I have is the meat and booze.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” Ed said, and Senderovsky immediately thought of a fitting epitaph for his friend: HERE LIES EDWARD SUNGJOON KIM, HE WAS IN NO HURRY. He accelerated the car farther north along a tight state road that allowed for a view of the purple mountains across the river, each given a sophomoric American name. Peekamoose was his daughter’s favorite. Meanwhile, as Senderovsky pattered on about the weather, the political news, speculation about the virus, the merits of sweet sausage versus hot Italian, Ed espied a great frontal system of boredom on the horizon, of endless upper-middle-class chatter, badly made country Negronis, cigarettes snuck. What could he do? His friend had begged him to come up, and the now-muted city would be more depressing still.

  “So who else is coming?” Ed asked. “Besides the Exalted One.” He was referring to the famous actor who was coming up for a few days to work on a screenplay with Senderovsky, the source of his friend’s anxiety. “Karen, you said.”

  “Vinod, too.”

  “Haven’t seen him in ages. Is he still in love with Karen?”

  “He lost a lung to cancer a few years ago. Then he lost his job at City College.”

  “That’s a lot of loss.”

  “Masha wanted him to come up, because his immune system might be compromised.”

  “I wish I was tragic enough for your wife to like me.”

  “Keep working on it.”

  “Who else?”

  “An old student of mine. She published an essay collection last year. The Grand Book of Self-Compromise and Surrender. It made a splash.”

  “Well, at least she’ll be young. Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two. How’s your kid, by the way?”

  “Flourishing,” Senderovsky said.

  They skidded into a town that wasn’t. The selection at Rudolph’s Market, its sole business, contained goods that neither Ed (born Seoul, 1975) nor his host (Leningrad, 1972) had enjoyed in their early non-American years, candy that tasted like violets, bread that was so enriched you could use it for insulation. Alongside these outrageously marked-up nostalgic items were international ones even dearer, which Ed carelessly piled into a basket. There were fresh whole sardines that could be grilled before the meats, dirigible-shaped Greek olives from ancient islands, cheeses so filled with aromatic herbs they inspired (on Senderovsky’s part) memories that had never happened, ingredients for a simple vitello tonnato that somehow came to over eighty dollars, excluding the veal. “I think we have enough,” Senderovsky said with alarm. “I don’t want anything to spoil.”

  They were standing in a long line of second-home owners. When the shocking amount due appeared on a touch screen, they both looked away, until the old woman behind the counter coughed, informatively, into her gloved fist. Senderovsky sighed and reached for his card.

  Soon, they were raising gravel up the long driveway. It was only 2:00 p.m., but the workers had already left, along with their powerful trucks stenciled with old local names. “I’m sorry about all these dead branches,” Senderovsky said. “I’ve been trying to get them cleaned up.”

  “What branches?” Ed was looking absently at his new home, at the bungalows rising up behind the main house like a half circle of orbiting moons. The sky was the color of an old-fashioned projector screen pulled down to the edges of the distant hills, splotched here and there by the hand of an inky boy.

  Meanwhile, in her office, Masha had lifted up a heavy beaded curtain. She saw Ed clambering out of her husband’s car with the languor that came so easily for him. Naturally, he had not sat in the back, like she had asked. She made a snort she instantly recognized as her grandmother’s, a labor camp survivor. Well, there it is, her grandmother would say. The first of the children was here. More children for Masha to take care of, in addition to the one watching Asian boy-band videos upstairs, mouth open, eyes bleary, pacified. Soon the property would be filled with them, grown children without children. All of her friends were married, unlike her husband’s (and none was crazy enough to visit someone else’s house at a time like this). Masha shut off her screen, thought about changing out of her kaftan for Ed, but then went into the driveway exactly as she was.

  Ed was walking with the leather Gladstone creaking behind him. Masha had partly grown up in New Jersey and had seen powerful men carry golf bags in a similar way. “How was the train up?” she shouted, her tone a little too needy, she thought.

  “Charming,” Ed said. “I got a seat with river views.” He knew he had to get some preliminaries out of the way: “Thank you so much for hosting me during this time. It’s much appreciated.” He forced himself to take an exaggerated breath of damp air. “Mmm,” he said. “Just what the surgeon general ordered. You both look wonderful. Sasha’s really lost some weight.”

  The weight comment, he quickly realized, could be misinterpreted by Masha, who was beautiful but now reminded him of a noblewoman’s portrait he had seen last year at the Tretyakov Gallery. The kaftan certainly didn’t help. The two men walked silently up the cedar steps of the vast covered porch, which was connected to the main house and overlooked the bungalows, the centerpiece of the property and also its jewel, a screened-in world within a world.

  “If you don’t mind, I’m going to be a little doctorly,” Masha said, “if that’s even a word.”

  “Not at all,” Ed said. Not at all he didn’t mind, or “doctorly” was not at all a word? Masha had to think about it, which maybe was the point.

  “I’ve made some rules,” she said. “Since you’ve taken the train up, maybe you could change into fresh clothes before you sit down anywhere. But before that I’d like to wipe down some of the surfaces, which the workers touched in your bungalow. There’s a lot we still don’t know about this virus.”

  “Safety first.”

  She did not like his tone. Senderovsky stood beside them in a hunched-over position. He had had to serve as diplomat between two feuding parents for many decades. “Also in public areas like the porch and the dining room,” Masha continued, “I’m going to try to space everyone out and also to give everyone a designated seat. I’m sorry if I sound like a killjoy.”

  “There’s no right or wrong here,” Ed said. “We all have to be ourselves during this crisis.”

  Actually, there was a right and a wrong here. Ed reminded her of her husband’s parents. Talking with them was like dealing with a smiling adversary who kept a handful of poisoned toothpicks in his pocket. Every time you let your guard down, there would be a sharp prick at your haunches.

  “Here’s another question I have to ask. And this is really a compliment, because you’re always going somewhere. Can you tell me where you’ve traveled since, let’s say, December of last year?”

  “Since December? Hmmm.” Ed looked up at the stucco-clad main house, a neutral gray like the sky. People of a certa
in class, immigrants in particular, did not like to rock the boat. A second-floor landing and an adjoining window were yellow-lit at an odd angle, like a Mondrian painting—the top quadrant being the daughter’s room, most likely. Ed had forgotten her name.

  “Well, I went to Addis for the jazz thing,” he said. “Then I went to AD to visit Jimmy who’s teaching there.” Ed drew a line in the air from (presumably) Addis Ababa to (presumably) Abu Dhabi. “I went back to Seoul for Christmas. No, wait.” The line across the Arabian Sea stopped abruptly, and Ed’s finger circled, dumping fuel. “I saw Suketu in Bombay, just for the weekend, then I continued on to Seoul.” Sasha followed the line in the air with great interest, imagining it were he and not Ed doing the travel, a business-class whiskey in hand. A long time ago, after his childhood relationship with Masha had ended, but before his adult relationship with her would begin, he had worked as a contributing editor to a travel magazine, humping around both hemispheres with nothing but a notepad and some vocabulary. That interval contained some of the best years of his life, the expense accounts, the sweat of tropical cities, the drunken camaraderie of the Eds of the world.

  “When did you leave Seoul?” Masha was asking.

  “Oh, I see what you’re getting at. I left right after Christmas, before things got bad there. And from there”—Ed’s index finger was ready for a significant jump—“I went to the Big Island.”

  “In honor of our bungalow!” Sasha said, brightly. The bungalow reserved for Ed mimicked the one he and Masha had enjoyed during their honeymoon on Hawaii’s Big Island, and it came with a feature no other house did—an outdoor shower, its walls rendered in seashells.

  “Yes,” Ed said. “My friend Wei got a bungalow at the Mauna Kea. Call me a bungalow hopper.”

  “Wei Li?” Senderovsky asked.

  “Wei Ko. He’s in biotech. I guess this is his moment to shine.”

  “And then you came back to the city,” Masha said.

  “Well, actually, no. My brother bought a vineyard in Hungary.” Senderovsky remembered the Austrian Riesling and assorted alcohol still rattling around in his trunk, and prayed nothing had broken during his many trips, especially the eighteen-year-old bottle he had bought for Ed and the Actor to share. “I was over by Lake Balaton,” Ed continued. “Did your families ever go there back in the day? Soviet vacations? The wine was plonk, but I ate a great veal liver soaked in butter and paprika, would love to know how they made it. And then London.”

  “Any reason for London?” Masha asked. Sasha thought that she sounded like a Heathrow immigration officer inspecting a visitor from a developing country.

  “No, it was just—London,” Ed said.

  “Last question, I promise. Any trips to China or Northern Italy?”

  “Nope,” Ed said. He set down his Gladstone bag with a thud of frustration. “Wait, actually, I transferred through Linate once.”

  “That’s Milan,” Sasha said.

  Both men noted the way Masha looked at her husband just then. But it wasn’t her husband’s suggestion that she wasn’t worldly that irked her. They force me to be someone I’m not, Masha thought. They mistake my caring for authoritarianism, and then I have no choice but to become Stalin in an apron. But what option do I have if I’m to keep these cretins from getting sick?

  “It was a very brief transfer,” Ed said of his time in Northern Italy. “I’m sure I don’t have it.” When Ed Kim became nervous during conversation, he cupped his right hand behind his right ear, as if trying to make a conch shell out of it. It was a nervous tic everyone noticed, and he himself was well aware of, but he couldn’t stop his ear cupping during times of social anxiety.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Masha said. “I really hate to go through all this. It’s because of Natasha.” Right, that was the daughter’s name. Sasha, Masha, Natasha. They didn’t even try, these Russians. “You can’t be too careful,” she added. “Any special requests for dinner?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Ed said. “I’m going to cook tonight. You just rest up. I’ve heard parents have it extra hard these days. And I’m sure Sasha’s no help at all.”

  “We bought some amazing things,” Senderovsky said. “We know how much you love fresh sardines.” Masha smiled. Even if it wasn’t true that they had thought of her, the lie was nice. She would settle for the lie. Ed thought he had caught a glimpse of her youth when she smiled. The new plushness of her chin reminded him of a Greek girl he had fallen in love with, almost a decade ago to the day, one of the last times he had ever loved somebody, had allowed forgotten parts of himself, the underside of his ankles, his eyelashes, to tingle for no reason. Senderovsky placed both hands in the fertile valley between his breasts and his throat, happy that his friend and his wife were getting along. There was complete stillness now, except for the sound of an overexcited tree frog and the handyman loudly clipping the hedges by the covered pool, as if protesting his lot.

  A pebbled path ran between the bungalows, in a way that Senderovsky had hoped would create the feel of a tidy European village, the kind that would have never welcomed his ancestors. The bungalows formed a crescent around the main house, some overlooking a classical meadow, others a minor forest overrun by noisy animals. They were cozy in winter, as all small dwellings should be, and utilitarian in summer, but they lacked the visual flair of smoking chimneys or sliding porch doors. The luxuries were supposed to be communal: the fine food and even-finer conversation. There had been a dearth of laughter and clever ideas in Senderovsky’s early homelife, and even though nowadays he went out to restaurants and the occasional literary party in the city, nothing pleased him more than being the ringleader of his country menagerie. Not to mention the stealth surprise of walking across acres of private Senderovsky land on a continent that had signed his adoption papers.

  Alone, Ed unpacked his bag, laptop (he remembered now that there was no reception in the bungalow), chargers, fresh packets of balled-up Korean underwear presented by his mother’s maid, polo shirts, a linen jacket (would he really have to stay into summer?), two ties, and a pocket square. He sat down on the soft, comfortable, Art Deco–adjacent bed and had what must have been a panic attack, his breaths coming in quick short bursts as if he was sucking air out of a balloon at gunpoint.

  The sole window disclosed an ever-deepening gray, an artificial intelligence’s idea of days passing on earth. He was so close yet so far from the city’s fast-moving harbor skies. Were there ever contrails above the peaked cedar roof? Planes following the river down to the airports? He heard a purser’s strict, pinched voice from what already seemed like another era: Meine Damen und Herren, wir begeben uns jetzt auf den Abstieg nach Berlin-Tegel. How many of his similarly situated friends around the world were looking out of a double-insulated window or up at a pitched cedar ceiling trying to calm themselves with similar incantations?

  Above the headboard there was a lush photograph of lava from the Big Island’s Kīlauea volcano boiling into the Pacific. Ed thought the composition was obvious but beautiful, interplanetary even, yet he scrambled up on the bed and moved the frame to make it about twenty degrees off kilter. He messed up the bed’s careful sheets as if two lovers had just enjoyed a tussle on it. He spotted two carved wooden statues of pineapples on the modernist desk (noting that significant pineapple production had only ever taken place on Maui and Oahu, never on the Big Island) and knocked over one of them, adding some asymmetry to the deathly hospital order around him.

  What would his mother say from her immovable Gangnam cocoon, her throat tingling with hot barley tea? Advice she would never follow herself. Be strong for your friends.

  A woman—Masha, it would have to be—was screaming from the direction of the long covered porch. It sounded to Ed like “Gnat! Gnat! Gnat!” She was living in the country and afraid of a gnat? Ed leaned back on the bed, liberated a Gauloise from a crumpled pack, and stared down the blink
ing light of the smoke detector above him. Be strong for his friends? Velocity was his friend. Disappearing landscapes were his friends. He remembered that Sasha had left an ashtray for him under the bathroom sink. The rebellious cigarette quickly lightened Ed’s mood. There was still some time before dinner, wasn’t there? He had forgotten his earplugs but managed to fall asleep anyway.

  2

  Karen Cho bowed her rental car into the many dips and blind turns of the familiar country road, her driving skills only marginally more restrained than Senderovsky’s. She had tuned in a satellite channel blasting songs from her youth and was trying to take it seriously, the way Ed always did, giving even the stupidest song his karaoke best. And this was not a stupid song.

  Christine, the strawberry girl.

  Christine, banana split lady.

  She had missed driving since moving back from the West Coast, but, unlike Senderovsky, she could never identify the frisson it gave her, the sense of being slightly more American in the very act of piloting a many-ton behemoth down a road with excess speed, stuffing a hatchback with a family-sized pack of absorbent towels, clicking on the hypnotic metronome of a turning signal. Driving matched her new sense of power, which, if she were honest with herself, she still did not fully understand. “What does it feel like?” Senderovsky kept asking her after she had sold her so-called company, really just an idea, a software developer (her friend and former bandmate) and two intellectual property lawyers on retainer. She told him that she could now lash out at a white man in an expensive hoodie, safe in the knowledge that she would still get to keep her money when she was done yelling at him.

  Now she’s in purple, now she’s the turtle.

  Disintegrating.

  Karen slammed on the brakes. “Whoa,” she said. Since the divorce, she had started speaking to herself. A perfectly rolling green hill conjured up a dinosaur’s back. The back was covered with woolly little ticks. She remembered now that a part of Sasha’s property abutted a sheep farm, and so she pulled over and got out of the humming, beeping car. The sheep were lined up in rows as if practicing the very distancing prescribed for their owners. They had recently been sheared and now carried themselves like gangly teenagers. Some had their mouths stuffed with grass, but most were watching something beyond the fence separating their farm from Senderovsky Land. Karen wanted to take out her phone to snap a picture, but stopped herself. Recently, she had sworn to stop uploading photographs to the very social media that had made her rich, to enjoy moments instead of imprisoning them.