There’s this concept of the American dream that everyone around here seems to want to live up to. I can even remember my tata talking about it back when I was a kid.
“Do you know how blessed this family is?” he would say. “We live in America! The land of the free! The home of the brave!” The old Romanian would recite the various patriotic slogans that were force-fed to us kids back in the days of the Iron Curtain, as those were some of the only English things he knew how to say. And he probably didn’t even know what they meant.
I don’t mean to criticize him, though. My father was a great man, back in his day. He’d managed raise an entire family in a foreign country off of the meager sums created by his little piroshki restaurant down in South Tacoma. He was too old when he’d moved up here to learn any of the other languages. When I was older, I’d asked him: “Why do you own a piroshki restaurant when you did not even know what piroshki was before you moved to America?”
His response was deliberate, as his words nearly always were. “These Americans do not have a taste for our chiftele or papricas or baklava. But they do know the taste of piroshki.”
I had lost track of the number of times an actual Russian would walk into our piroshki restaurant, assume us to be Russian, and say “privyet,” or something to that extent, and my father would merely smile and reply: “buna” in his own native talk. Even in school, everyone knew that the Petrescue family owned a piroshki restaurant, and so they thought we were Russian as well. Nobody seemed to notice that neither my brother nor I were given Russian names. Tata did not mind this at all; he insisted that our family was purely American.
My brother was born after me, in 1935, and was given the more appropriate name: John. He was always known as the smart one, yet he never even learned our native language. He did well in school, and eventually made it into the big University up in Seattle. My father was especially proud of that son. “John,” he would say. “My Abel, you will be very successful, you are an American boy.” He didn’t have the central-European looks that we did, either. His hair was light, and he had a slighter sort of build.
I, on the other hand, was blessed with the brawn of the family. Tata had different words to say to me: “Vasile, my son, you must always work if you are to live the dream of the Americans.” I was never as smart as John. I’ve never been able to write much anything, partly on account that my mother taught me to speak Romanian before any other language. I could not speak more than ten words of English until I was six, which is around the time our mother died. I was always bigger than John, though. During the summers, he was too sickly to do actual work, and so he worked in the restaurant. But my place was in the industrial areas up north, almost in Seattle. I worked in the seaside factories for six years, until at last my father forced me to attend Glover Park, a little technical college a few miles from our home.
My father did not die a rich man. He departed the world nearly alone, with only me at his bedside.
“Where is your brother John?” he asked me on his deathbed.
“He is working, he’ll be down tomorrow.”
He smiled dreamily, looking up at the speckled ceiling of the hospital. “That is good. I do wish to see his face again. I love you two boys.”
“We love you too, tata.”
But John did not visit until the next morning, and by then our tata had already passed. There was little talk of where his inheritance would go, as there was so little in his bank funds at all.
“Well, I suppose we are alone now, Vasile,” said John. We were sitting in our old family house, days after we had buried our father.
“You are not alone.”
John shook his head. “You are the only family I have left.”
“Then get yourself a woman.” I looked up at him, attempting to smile.
“I already have.”
I had no reply; I was taken aback.
“The wedding’s in March. You’ve gotta be there. You’re gonna be my best man!” He smiled, showing each of his straight, white teeth.
For a moment longer I didn’t know what to say. Instead I reached forward, clutching my brother in a tight embrace.
“What's her name?” I said once we were apart.
“Mary.”
“Mary,” I repeated. “Mary and John Petrescue. That does sound American enough for Ta!”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Mary and John Peterson. We are going for the full-American deal.”
“The American Dream.”
It wasn’t until the year 1958 that I got married myself, to a shy little girl named Marilyn who worked as a receptionist for the construction company that employed me. She wasn’t as pretty as John’s Mary, but it did not matter to me. Marilyn and Vasile Petrescue were far from meeting my brother’s standards of the American dream. Within a year she had our first child, a son, who I named James.
By that time, John already lived in a beautiful two thousand, five hundred square foot home in a suburb only a few miles out of Seattle. He’d had three kids, two boys and a girl, and each Christmas we got a card from them with a photograph of each of their beautiful children inside.
“We should make cards this year,” said Marilyn one November as we sat around the dinner table.
“Yeah!” said James.
I shook my head, and the air around the table immediately transformed from one of excitement to one of disappointment. “We can’t afford that this year.”
Marilyn gazed absentmindedly at the wall, her plump lips turned into a pout. One hand sat beneath her chin, and I could see that her hands were worn and calloused. I instantly felt a pang in the pit of my stomach; my own wife was now forced to work cleaning houses five days a week because I was incapable of providing enough for my family.
“Are we gonna go down to uncle John’s this year?” asked James, breaking the silence.
“Yes, we go there every Christmas, James,” I said.
“There’s no reason to be short with him, he’s just curious. He loves going down to visit his cousins.” Marilyn scooped the last of the mashed potatoes onto her plate.
“Yeah! Their house is so big! And Willie told me that they’re gonna get new Legos this year!” James nearly stood up with excitement.
“That does sound lovely,” I said, standing up and carrying my plate towards the sink. “I’m off to bed now. Good-night, James.”
“Okay, Daddy.” He ran from the table towards me, grabbing me tightly around the legs. “I love you.”
“I love you too, son.”
It wasn’t that I went to bed that early. I just didn’t like being up, having to look at my family’s faces. It was the 1960’s, when everyone was living that American dream. Even my father was able to live it, as a poor Romanian immigrant. My brother had attained success. And, for some reason, Vasile Petrescue was incapable of reaching that standard.
Christmas time was always the most stressful time of all. I didn’t have the money or the time to go out and buy good presents for my kid, and so he had to suffer through Christmas after Christmas with only a couple presents. He never got the fancy new fire engine, the one that lighted up when you pressed a button, even though he talked of it incessantly. I’m sure each of John’s kid’s had three.
On Christmas Eve, the three of us drove an hour north to my brother’s little suburb in our little station wagon with the fake wood siding. James and Marilyn sang their little carols on the way, and I attempted to chime in, but my accent seemed to overpower the beauty of their voices.
“Sing, Daddy!” James would beg.
“Ah, you don’t want my voice to ruin your song.”
“Just sing! Sing Jingle Bells!”
I shook my head. “I don’t know the words.”
Marilyn playfully slapped my shoulder. “Just sing, Vasile! Just be happy!”
And for once, I truly did sing, I as I knew every word of that carol. Although the rain thundered outside the walls of the car, the inside was warm, and I felt truly comfortable.
That night, at dinner, I noticed a difference in John’s attitude. When little Ralph dropped his spoon on the floor, John slammed his fist down on the table, exclaiming: “Ralph! You’re seven years old! Get some table manners!”
The table was nearly silent after that.
“How is work going, you two?” Mary asked, attempting to start conversation. Her blonde hair was in perfect ringlets.
“Good,” said Marilyn. “We aren’t as busy this time of year, though. Which can make things more difficult.” Underneath the table, she set her left hand upon my thigh, a simple gesture that perhaps relieved some of my agitation.
Mary nodded. “John’s been working fifteen hours a day, haven’t you, dear?”
John nodded quickly. “Yes, yes I have.”
He didn’t seem to be in a chatty mood.
After dinner, I sought a more private conversation with my brother’s wife. “Is everything all right with John?” I asked her.
“It is difficult to work so often,” she said, and then walked away, turning her shoulder against me coldly. In private, she was not the same kind woman that she was in normal social situations. But I had hoped that we could find some sort of peace on the mutual concern of John’s health.
That night, I lay in bed with Marilyn. James slept in Willie’s room. Marilyn reached across my shoulder, petting me.
“Do you worry about your brother?” she asked.
“No…” I paused. “No, I don’t. I mean, look at him. He has everything a man could ask for. Look at his house! Look at his clothes! Look at his teeth!”
“But perhaps that just isn’t enough.”
“How could that be? I would trade the world to live in his place.” After the words left my lips, I instantly regretted them, and Marilyn rolled over, her back to me. We did not speak again.
Sometime, in the middle of the night, I was awoken by a dreadful screaming.
“What is it?” said Marilyn in a hushed voice, sitting up suddenly in bed.
“It sounds like Mary.” I stood up, pulling my pair of trousers on over my bare legs.
“I do hope everything is okay.” She switched on the lamp, pulled her long hair up into a bun, then followed me out the bedroom door and upstairs.
Mary’s yells grew louder as we ascended the staircase. I could here the light pitter-patter of the children’s feet as they followed us up the stairs.
“Mary?” I called into the darkness. “Mary, what is it?”
“Call the hospital! Call an ambulance! Call the police!” Mary screamed.
With those words, I began running up the stairs. “What is it? What is it?” I repeated over and over again.
“In the bathroom…” she whispered, before fainting onto the linoleum.
The police arrived roughly ten minutes after I came upon the body of my younger brother, resting in a bathtub of red water. And although they lifted him onto the gurney, loaded him into the ambulance, and drove him to the hospital as fast as they could, there was just no saving him.
At around four o’clock in the morning, Marilyn and I were sitting together in the waiting room at the hospital. The four children lay on the floor, asleep. I thought Marilyn to be asleep too, but she spoke.
“Perhaps this is the only time he ever relaxed.”
I nodded slowly, stroking her hair with my finger.
“And what is the point of owning so much if you never enjoy it?”
I nodded again. My own brother, John Peterson, had the definition of the 1960’s perfect household. And yet he gave it all up, and died at his own hands. For the first time in many years, I thought back to my tata. He called himself a successful man, and he died with nothing. John, who had everything in life, was still not happy with it all. And then it came to me.
“Marilyn, do you love me?”
She sat up, looking at me with her tired, squinting eyes. “Why yes, of course I do.”
“Does James love me?”
“Of course he does.”
“Then I am already living the American Dream.”
