Page 1 of Aftertaste

PART ONEMOUTHFEELS

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 TIMEKonstantin 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 waterloggedRusskaya 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.Theirfathers 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 itinfrequently and had stopped making it after he died. Kostya had never tastedpechonka. 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, TWELVEmonths 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 thelyulya-kebaband 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-thickolivié, earth-sweet beetvinegret—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 seedpiroshky, 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!”

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