My father died when I was young. That is the central tragedy of my life. But his spirit never left me, and that may be the defining miracle of my life.
Eric Ripert
32 Yolks
BITTER
THE FIRST TIME Konstantin Duhovny tasted something he hadn’t actually eaten he was eleven, seated on the edge of the public pool in Brighton Beach, his heels churning grey water into foam.
He was watching the backs of the other boys—the ones he was supposed to be swimming with, but who never invited him, even out of politeness, into their circle—as they splashed about, showing off handstands and lung capacities, spouting chlorinated water a foot into the air like porpoises.
He watched them all afternoon—Mitya and Sasha and Misha K. and Misha B. (whom they kept calling Bear because of the thick, black hair up and down his back)—until, one by one, their fathers finished their waterlogged Russkaya Reklamas, scratched their nipples through threadbare white undershirts, and peeled their pasty bodies from the rubber loungers, signaling quitting time.
Kostya had come chaperoned by his cousin Valerik—not his real cousin, but the teenage son of Tetya Natasha, not his real aunt but an acquaintance of his mother’s—who had promptly dumped him when his girlfriend whispered something about a kissing booth at the boardwalk nearby.
Don’t you move, Valerik had hissed at Kostya. I’ll be back.
That had been two hours ago.
As the last boy, Mitya, raised the handle of the chain-link fence, Kostya felt himself blister with jealousy. There was no one to ferry him home, just like there had been no one to slather sunblock onto his back—which he could already feel was red and tight and burnt—and just like there would be no one to teach him how to talk to these boys in a way that made it clear that he was one of them.
But then, of course, he wasn’t one of them. Their fathers were alive.
He kicked faster at the water, kicked violently, kicked at the fathers and sons, kicked at the great cavity of longing inside himself, this way of missing someone, missing them desperately, missing every part including those he’d never known, a pocket so deep he thought that if he could only reach inside of it, worry its lining long enough, break through it to the other side, to where empty could grow full as a belly round with food, he might just find what he was looking for.
Right then, something traveled across his tongue, and Kostya stopped kicking. It coated the inside of his mouth, thick as paste, the taste—the uneaten taste—overpowering. It was savory, salty, the texture mealy, slightly sweet and fatty, something tart, barely, and then, at the tail, in the back of his throat, bitter, bitter, blooming like a bruise. Good, but also bad, just a little bit like shit. He wondered briefly whether one of the boys had found a way to make him ingest a turd—it seemed the sort of thing that boys with fathers could do to a boy without one—but just as quickly, the sensation vanished. Kostya smacked his lips, trying to call it back, but there was nothing left now, only a warmth spreading slowly across his tongue as he choked back tears.
It was only in the absence of the taste that he suddenly recognized what it had been.
Chicken liver, sautéed onions, fresh dill garnish, squeeze of lemon.
Pechonka.
His father’s favorite dish, according to his mother, who invoked it infrequently and had stopped making it after he died. Kostya had never tasted pechonka. He just knew, like an instinct, like another sense he’d only now become conscious of, that the ghost of that dish—not its taste, but its aftertaste—had just been inside of his mouth, spirited there by the person who most longed to taste it again.
SALTY
BEFORE THAT, TWELVE months prior.
A Tuesday. Hot. Summer, simmering.
Kostya’s dad tying a revolting tie, standard issue from the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Kostya glanced over at him from the kitchen—he was always in the kitchen then—standing in one sock before the refrigerator, the door agape. He’d been there long enough to make the kefir sweat, beads dribbling down the side of the carton, the motor gasping as the temperature rose. He was studying the contents; his dad had stumped him last time, but not today.
“Close icebox,” his father tsked. “You break like this. Spoil produce. Expensive to fix.”
“Sorry,” Kostya muttered, and swung the door shut with no urgency at all, stealing a last long look at the chilled jars and tins and plastic containers marked in Cyrillic.
Kostya couldn’t really read Russian (he was ten, and smart enough, but this was America, not Soviet Ukraine) so he’d memorized how the Russian grocery stores packed their wares, that the lyulya-kebab and rice were scooped into Styrofoam boxes; that the pickles—half-sour, full sour, pickled cabbage, brined tomatoes—bobbed gently in opaque plastic quarts; that the salads—spicy carrot slaw, mayonnaise-thick olivié, earth-sweet beet vinegret—were contained in small, clear pints with rectangular labels; that the white paper bags growing steadily transparent with grease held meat or sour cherry or sauerkraut or poppy seed piroshky, and he peered around the refrigerator shelves, taking inventory. Then he sat down at the small dinette, his hands folded businesslike on the sticky plastic tablecloth.
“I’m ready,” Kostya announced.
His father was fussing with the tie and didn’t look up.
“Papa,” he whined, switching to Russian, “do the game! Give me a taste!”
Kostya hoped the effort at his native tongue might tip the scales; his dad had spent the last few weeks battling Kostya’s aversion to Russian, the language beginning to feel foreign, mealy on his tongue. Kostya just wanted to be like the cool kids in school—American, English-speaking, normal—and to fit in, be seen instead of ignored.
Kostya’s dad gazed with weary longing at the fridge, then up at the clock over the stove, a frown replacing his momentary consideration.
“Can’t today, Kostochka.” He sounded truly sorry. “I have new route. Can’t be late.”
“But, but!” Back to English. “Just one time. It’ll be quick.”
The last time they played their tasting game—his father slipping morsels into Kostya’s mouth for him to identify (eyes closed, no peeking)—Kostya had gotten four in a row right (doktorskaya bologna, apricot preserves, a buttered radish, a halva cube) and was on the high of a winning streak when his dad fed him an oily piece of fish on the tines of a fork.
“Easy! Sardine!” he’d yelled, triumphant, before he even finished chewing.
“Nyet!” his father yelled back, smacking the table with delight, and Kostya opened his eyes in stunned surprise. “Sprats!”
But that had been weeks ago.
“Just one time,” Kostya repeated now, his voice a donut, glazed.
His dad smiled and kissed him on the head.
“With you is never one time.”
They started the game years ago, when Kostya was eight, in the early days of emigration. A way
to remind him where he’d come from. To hold heritage in his mouth. To taste their past, an ocean away. It was Kostya’s favorite thing, the bright memory he clung to when other kids, American ones, laughed at his ill-fitting clothes, his unfamiliar food, his poor grammar.
“I swear!”
“Kostochka, I must get bus.”
Kostya stalked his dad back down the hall and into his parents’ bedroom, where he watched him hunt on the nightstand for his name pin—Sergei Duhovny (Driver #0727) etched in chintzy gold lamé.
“But Papa—”
His dad sidestepped into the cramped corridor, back toward the kitchen. Kostya tailed him, relentless. He needed this now, needed it badly, needed something good. The day before, on Riegelmann Boardwalk, two boys had walked by the bench where Kostya was eating lunch, not bothering to lower their voices as they appraised his meal, the leftover zharkoye—soft-stewed beef in thick brown sauce—in its mismatched Tupperware an affront to the all-American beef franks in their hands. What a weirdo, one said to the other. Can you hear us, weirdo? What’s he eating? Looks like diarrhea.
“Later, Kostya. When I come back.”
“No,” Kostya whined, a petulant pout materializing on his lower lip. “Now.”
“Nyet,” his father repeated firmly. “Later.”
“There’s never a later!”
His father sighed, equal parts exhaustion and apology.
“I must run. I kiss you.”
“All you do is work. This is our one thing!”
“Go in your room, Kostya,” his father whispered.
But Kostya didn’t budge. He was toeing an edge, deciding to leap.
“Mama’s right,” he spat out. “We should have stayed in Kyiv!”
He’d overheard his mother talking once, in a hushed voice to her sister on the phone. A whole-pack-of-cigarettes conversation.
“Mama? What does she—”
“You’d cook! You’d own a restaurant instead of driving a stupid bus!” Kostya shouted over him. “And I wouldn’t be so ashamed.”
“Go in your room,” his father said, louder, a crackle to his voice like onion skin. “You understand nothing.”
He reached for the doorknob.
Kostya’s hands formed fists, his nails making crescents in his palm. There was a bad taste in his mouth, a morning mash of unbrushed teeth and anger.
“You brought us to America,” he spat out, repeating things he’d never been meant to hear. “Because you wanted to come. Because you only thought about yourself. You didn’t think how it would be for me. So go, then; I don’t care. Go to the Devil!”
It sounded different in
English. Better. The way the popular kids said it as they slammed their lockers shut. Go to Hell. Still, Kostya felt the power of it course through him, thunder in his chest, a sudden stillness in the room.
His father stopped, his back to Kostya.
“As you say,” he said quietly, and slipped through the door, his shoulders sagging with defeat.
If his father had yelled, had punished him, had retaliated in any way, it might have turned out differently, made it easier for Kostya to tell himself, days and months and years later, that his dad had known he hadn’t meant it. But the resignation in his father’s voice, the obvious pain that Kostya had inflicted on the person he loved most in the world, lanced him like a barb.
Even in the immediate hangover of the moment, he couldn’t take his eyes off the door, kept waiting for his dad to come back and forgive him. To fix what Kostya had broken. He told himself not to cry as he tasted the salt of his own tears, like drinking in a sea. It was as if Kostya already knew—the way his father’s farewell echoed in his head, the catch in his voice like a tear in time—that it would be the last thing he’d ever hear him say. ...
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