My Korean Deli: Risking It All for a Convenience Store (29 page)

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FALL GEORGE STORMS INTO THE
office, directly after returning from a month-long vacation in the Hamptons, and with his suitcases still in the hallway and sand still stuck to his shoes, he summons the staff for an emergency meeting right there next to the luggage—no cocktails, no sandwiches, no merry round of storytelling to get things started.

“I’ve just finished reading the material you all gave me to consider for the next issue,” he says, waving a pile of manuscripts, “and it is dreadful. In fact, it’s the worst pile of submissions I have ever seen.” Then he looks directly at me. “Ben, would you care to defend
this?” He starts reading from one of the stories I gave him, a very solid piece from a reputable literary agent. The young female author had written a sort of McEwanesque horror story about a young woman being absorbed—consumed, really—by pregnancy and marriage into a libidinous and depraved upper-class family. George, reading it in the most lugubrious voice imaginable, gives it the sort of treatment no story could survive.

“You call that writing?” he sneers after a few paragraphs. “Tell me why. I want to know.”

I falter, unable to respond, in part because I know that despite what he says, George does not really want to know. He’s not interested in a debate. He wants to make a point, and he knows that if he fights dirty, none of us will do so back.

He continues reading, making more and more of a mockery of my selection.

“How could you call yourself an editor and fall for that?” he taunts. “Really, it’s shameful.”

Then, seemingly becoming aware of how vicious he’s being, he steps back. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot this way, but I just have this feeling that … things are not right here. We’ve gone astray, and we have to get back on track. Everything is on the line! We must do
something
. I want to shock you all into action.”

Then he goes upstairs, and the staff confers.

What to do? To some of us, this isn’t about the magazine per se or even just the fiction; it’s about George showing us who’s boss after being away for a while. Or it’s his way of coping with the distress that his memoir is causing him, a display of bravado intended for himself as much as anyone. He just needed an audience.

That night I stay up late writing a defense of the story George rejected, a passionate appeal for reconsideration, which I’ve never attempted before. It will be the opening move, I’ve decided, of a
larger campaign to talk with George about the magazine before it’s too late.

SCARCELY A WEEK
later, I get a phone call at Kay’s house from the
Review
at an oddly early hour. I know everyone claims to experience this at such moments, but something really does tell me not to pick up the receiver, that bad news awaits at the other end of the line, and that if I don’t answer the news will reverse itself or simply go away. But the phone rings and rings—someone seems to have turned off the Paks’ answering machine—and eventually I have no choice but to pick up.

It’s Brigid, who’d gone into the office early because she was fretting over some last-minute detail concerning the fall issue, which she and George had just sent to the printer. As she was coming down East Seventy-second Street she saw an ambulance pull to the curb and paramedics rush into George’s townhouse, and when she stepped inside George’s sister was already there, and she stoically reported that George had not woken up that morning. The rest of his family was upstairs. Soon afterward the paramedics came down and quietly went back to their vehicle, and people started going up to George’s bedroom to say good-bye.

On the express train to Fifty-ninth Street I sit numbly, waiting for the flood of emotion. It doesn’t come. I don’t feel like I’m in denial—not after watching George’s health decline over the last year and worrying about him as much as we all have. Yet it doesn’t seem possible that George, of all people, is gone, and part of me truly believes that when I get to the office it will turn out to be one of his stunts, an elaborate hoax for some magazine piece he’s writing.

Of course, the fantasy crumbles as soon as I walk into the office and see the faces of the staff, a moment that unleashes the flood I had been expecting. As I sit there at my desk, a basket case, I think
of the last conversation I had with George, up in his kitchen, and wonder if he was in even worse shape than I realized. This fills me with regret for not doing a better job of helping him, and for probably making him worry about the
Review
a lot more than he needed to at the time. It’s hard to feel too much gloom and despair upon the death of someone as essentially lighthearted as George, yet there really was a melancholy tinge to his being, and it was something I now knew he wished he could have expressed more openly. Most of all I just feel an implacable sadness at the idea of not seeing him anymore.

That morning, without George, no one in the office has any clue what to do except cry. Eventually we decide to call all of George’s friends (a job that would literally take days were we to be even halfway successful) and tell them the news before it reaches them via some impersonal medium such as the Internet. They, in turn, of course want to know what the cause was (which in a day or so we’ll know to have been a heart attack) and whether anything had happened to George, a trauma of some kind. However, as far as we can tell, George had had a normal evening, wandering the city and drifting from party to party. It was the way he lived, alone but out in the world, totally private and public at the same time. He must have had fun (didn’t he always?) because he came home late, then died peacefully in his sleep, a fitting end for a life like his, except that I really think he would have preferred to fall into the polar bear’s cage.

Over the next few weeks the shock wears off and is replaced by a period of collective self-examination. As if George’s loss isn’t a big enough tragedy, the
Review
has to answer all sorts of fundamental questions about its own existence and whether to go on without him and, if so, how. What did George mean to the
Review
, and can he be replaced? Is it enough to have his genes embedded in the institution, or does it require his touch, his instincts? Maybe
the magazine died with him; maybe it died a long time ago. Essentially these are academic questions suited for a biographer or a symposium on little magazines, except that jobs are on the line, not to mention one of the great names in American letters.

George himself had long resisted thinking about the future, despite his exhortations to us, the staff, and his own occasional morbid tendencies. He didn’t groom a successor, and every now and then he hinted that should he pass suddenly, he would like the
Review
to shut down. No one believed him, though, one reason being that he had recently assented, at the urging of his lawyer, to the creation of a board of trustees that would do exactly the opposite—namely, ensure that the
Review
survived in his absence. The board consists entirely of George’s friends in the publishing industry, writers, editors and arts patrons who could be counted on to open doors and sign checks if needed, but who would otherwise stay out of George’s way. They were not supposed to be involved this soon, but now with George gone they must decide how to move forward. And for those of us on the staff who’ve long been frustrated by George’s quirks as a boss (which is to say, nearly everyone) their presence is a huge relief, because they of all people—outsiders from the real world—should grasp the need for
professionalization
. In fact, one board member tells us right away that the
Review
needs to “grow up.”

The irony, of course, is that because of the deli, my appreciation for whatever you want to call George’s approach—amateurism, dilettantism, Walter Mittyism—is much keener than it was a year ago. Now when I think of book fairs, the slush and having all these twenty-five-year-olds do jobs they’re patently unqualified for, I see something positive and altogether rare: the ability to remain small, open and full of passion. But it’s not an easy philosophy to articulate. You end up sounding like you’re arguing against progress or success. And after years of wishing that George would let
the magazine “grow up,” I’m not about to hinder that process anyway. Not without solid, well-defined reasons and a coherent strategy.

In any case, there isn’t time. As soon as George dies and the decision is reached to go on without him, there’s a feeling that a statement must be made quickly. Literary magazines are so ephemeral that missing even one issue would, in the board’s eyes, jeopardize its existence. Unfortunately, this rush forward distracts us from the personal struggle to come to terms with George’s death. We spend so much time thinking about what he meant as a mentor and a boss that we don’t really think about him as a friend and a human being.

But of course when someone is gone, you continually find yourself bombarded by little reminders of his or her presence. George had presence to burn—the shock of white hair, the old Boston face, the extra few inches in height. He had everything needed to draw attention. What I realize now that he is gone, however, is that George, like my father-in-law, was one of those people who entered a room so quietly you didn’t even notice. All you’d hear was the soft groan of a door hinge and the padding of socked feet. Then the rustle of paper, a vigorous scratch of the belly.
Are you busy? Don’t mind me. I would hate to … You are? Well, then, come upstairs and let’s shoot a game of pool. Come on, put that book down
.

More than once in the weeks after his death I sit in the office and listen to his desk chair creaking over my head, the way it did when he was really struggling. And once I hear his voice coming from the next room, with that inimitable accent and all its trademark locutions. (“Phooey!” “Drat!” “I should say!” “What a rare cat!” “You’ve made me cross again.”) It turns out to be his son, Taylor, paying a visit.

I’d noticed during the last year that George didn’t just make work look easy, which of course many successful people do. Easy wouldn’t have been enough. George had to make it look like he
was having fun, which of course he often was—great, guilt-free fun that was possibly unearned. But now I know that George’s fun-loving persona was part of his job, and that he really did work at it, as opposed to just reveling in it. After all, why make a career out of being “fun” if it was often an effort and wasn’t, strictly speaking, financially necessary? Maybe you do it simply because you’re used to doing it, or maybe you do it because you need to prove to yourself that you aren’t just coasting with what you were given—that you’re trying, and justifying, and improving, which wouldn’t be that different from outrunning a vague form of guilt, would it not? Maybe George and I had more in common than I thought.

LIKE MANY CAREER-MINDED WOMEN, GAB HAS ALWAYS WORRIED
about waiting too long to have children. Being the sort of hyperorganized, goal-oriented person that she is, she even had a specific age as her deadline: thirty-two. Thirty-two was the year because thirty-five was when the increased risk of birth defects kicks in, and she wanted enough time to have at least two kids before then.

If only her husband would comply.

During the summer, after things settled down at the store, we started trying to initiate “the plan” amid all the, uh, complications that result from having a potential audience of family members in close proximity. Knowing that one’s in-laws are upstairs and capable
of barging in at any second can make one fatally fearful and hesitant; however, it also has the potential to inject an element of danger and excitement! After all, here we were, a married couple in our thirties, a period during which physical romance often loses its adventurous thrill, having to tiptoe around and be secretive. It was like being teenagers again, except that when you’re young you’re in the mood all the time, so you don’t mind running out to the gardening shed on a moment’s notice (as opposed to thinking, “Right now? But
Fear Factor
isn’t over yet”). Also, when you’re young you heal faster after falling with your pants around your ankles into a box of gardening tools.

So we spent the summer being adolescent and wishing our bodies would follow suit. However, our attempts at reproduction have failed, boosting Gab’s impatience to a Kay-like level of intensity. Among other risks, she’s been leaving Pottery Barn Kids catalogs and how-to-get-pregnant books all over the place, which is alerting Kay to our efforts.

“She go to doctor
again?”
Kay asked me the other day while Gab was at the ob-gyn. Part of me thinks that Gab wants Kay to find out, because when she does she will drag Gab to her herbalist in Flushing, who will give her praying mantis ovaries or some such concoction guaranteed to get results. This scares me, though, because what if instead of Gab she focuses on me, and makes me go on a diet of rhinoceros horn or wolverine testicles? Or what if she just decides this is the last straw? “American man, he can’t do nothing, not even make beautiful wife pregnant!” (Donald Barthelme: “What an artist does, is fail.”) Maybe she’ll conclude that I’m not worth wolverine testicles.

Then one morning I pull myself out of bed and, as usual following a night shift, wake up with only half a brain. I’m dying for a cup of coffee, but as I drag myself into the kitchen I realize it won’t be necessary, because before she left for Manhattan, Gab
stuck a little present on the refrigerator door that provides all the jolt I need. No, it’s not a sonogram showing that at long last she is with child; it’s a note from her ob-gyn with the name of a male fertility clinic and some handy advice on masturbation, titled
“PATIENT INSTRUCTIONS FOR COLLECTION OF SEMEN SAMPLES
.”

After ripping the note down and checking the house to see if Kay or anyone else has seen it (thankfully, I’m the only one at home), I call Gab at her office and demand to know what she was thinking.

“Well, we’ve just been having so much trouble,” she says. “I thought it was time for you to get some help.”