When I was fourteen years old, I lost my Russian accent. I could, in theory, walk up to a girl and the words “Oh, hi there” would not sound like Okht Hyzer, possibly the name of a Turkish politician. There were three things I wanted to do in my new incarnation: go to Florida, where I understood that our nation’s best and brightest had built themselves a sandy, vice-filled paradise; have a girl, preferably native-born, tell me that she liked me in some way; and eat all my meals at McDonald’s. I did not have the pleasure of eating at McDonald’s often. My parents believed that going to restaurants and buying clothes not sold by weight on Orchard Street were things done only by the very wealthy or the very profligate, maybe those extravagant “welfare queens” we kept hearing about on television. Even my parents, however, as uncritically in love with America as only immigrants can be, could not resist the iconic pull of Florida, the call of the beach and the Mouse.

十四岁，我改掉了我的俄语口音。理论上，如果我走上前去，对一个女孩子说“嗨，好啊”的时候，听起来不会像“奥柯赫·海策”——貌似一个土耳其政客的名字。修炼成功之后，三件事情我想做：一，去佛罗里达，听说这个国家的贤能在此打造了一个举目沙滩，无处不佳的人间天堂；二，找个姑娘，她最好土生土长，说她莫名地喜欢我；三，每顿都吃麦当劳。以前我还不曾有过能隔三岔五吃麦当劳的福气。我的父母觉得，下馆子，衣服不到“果圃街”按斤两买，这种事情是只有极有钱或者极挥霍的人才做的，或者是那些优渥的“福利女王”[1]才能干得出来（我们时常在电视上看到）。但即便如我父母这样，怀揣一种只有移民才会有的感情——对美国深为喜爱却又不愿流露于言表，也无法抵御佛罗里达那些标志性的诱惑：海滩和那只著名“老鼠”的呼唤。

And so, in the midst of my Hebrew-school winter vacation, two Russian families crammed into a large used sedan and took I-95 down to the Sunshine State. The other family—three members in all—mirrored our own, except that their single offspring was a girl and they were, on the whole, more ample; by contrast, my entire family weighed three hundred pounds. There’s a picture of us beneath the monorail at EPCOT Center, each of us trying out a different smile to express the déjà-vu feeling of standing squarely in our new country’s greatest attraction, my own megawatt grin that of a turn-of-the-century Jewish peddler scampering after a potential sidewalk sale. The Disney tickets were a freebie, for which we had had to sit through a sales pitch for an Orlando time-share. “You’re from Moscow?” the time-share salesman asked, appraising the polyester cut of my father’s jib.

“Leningrad.”

“Let me guess: mechanical engineer?”

“Yes, mechanical engineer. . . . Eh, please Disney tickets now.”

所以，当我的希伯来学校放寒假，我们两个俄国家庭就塞入一部二手的大型三厢轿车，驶向“阳光之州”。另一家，也是与我家相对应的三口人，除了，那边是一个女儿，而且总体上他们家算更丰满一些。对比之下，我们家拢共加起来才三百磅。有一张我们在迪斯尼的单轨游车之侧的照片，我们六人在新家园最著名的游览胜地比肩而立，各自炮制笑容，展示我们“终得一见米奇鼠”的喜悦心情，我一咧嘴便是百万瓦特，好比一个刚刚定下一笔街边生意的犹太小贩。迪斯尼的票子是免费的，但为此我们必须坐穿一个推销奥兰多分时别墅[2]的宣传会。“你们是从莫斯科来的？”推销者一边打量着我父亲不修的边幅问道。

“列宁格勒。”

“我猜一下，你是机械工程师，是吧？”

“对的，机械工程师……呃，可以拿票子了吗？”

The ride over the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach was my real naturalization ceremony. I wanted all of it—the palm trees, the yachts bobbing beside the hard-currency mansions, the concrete-and-glass condominiums preening at their own reflections in the azure pool water below, the implicit availability of relations with amoral women. I could see myself on a balcony eating a Big Mac, casually throwing fries over my shoulder into the sea-salted air. But I would have to wait. The hotel reserved by my parents’ friends featured army cots instead of beds and a half-foot-long cockroach evolved enough to wave what looked like a fist at us. Scared out of Miami Beach, we decamped for Fort Lauderdale, where a Yugoslav woman sheltered us in a faded motel, beach-adjacent and featuring free UHF reception. We always seemed to be at the margins of places: the driveway of the Fontainebleau Hilton, or the glassed-in elevator leading to a rooftop restaurant where we could momentarily peek over the “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign at the endless ocean below, the Old World we had left behind so far and yet deceptively near.

开车从麦克阿瑟堤道到迈阿密海滩，是我真正的归化之旅。这一切我都想拥有：棕榈树，游艇依着豪宅随波起伏，由玻璃和混凝土搭建的公寓在蔚蓝水池自恋的倒影，放荡女子挥散在空气中的诱请。我想象自己站在阳台上，啃着巨无霸，薯条随手扔入身后咸咸的海风。但，还没到时候。父母朋友订的旅馆像军营，像样的床都没有，半英尺长的蟑螂进化斐然，向我们挥舞着拳头致意。迈阿密的沙滩吓走了我们，拔营向罗德岱堡进发。到了那，一个南斯拉夫女人接纳了我们，这是一家垂暮的汽车旅馆，靠近海滩，收得到免费的高频电视。任何地方，我们似乎都感觉身在边缘：枫丹白露希尔顿酒店的车道，亦或是通向顶层的透明电梯，而在楼顶餐厅，我们的视线越过“稍等片刻”的牌子，瞥见底下无际的大海，故乡，实远似近还远。

To my parents and their friends, the Yugoslav motel was an unquestioned paradise, a lucky coda to a set of difficult lives. My father lay magnificently beneath the sun in his red-and-black striped imitation Speedo while I stalked down the beach, past baking Midwestern girls. “Oh, hi there.” The words, perfectly American, not a birthright but an acquisition, perched between my lips, but to walk up to one of those girls and say something so casual required a deep rootedness to the hot sand beneath me, a historical presence thicker than the green card embossed with my thumbprint and freckled face. Back at the motel, the “Star Trek” reruns looped endlessly on Channel 73 or 31 or some other prime number, the washed-out Technicolor planets more familiar to me than our own.

对于我的父母和他们的朋友，这家南斯拉夫旅馆是不容置疑的天堂，是他们艰辛生活的幸运尾章。父亲穿着红黑剑条的冒牌Speedo泳裤晒着太阳，姿态不可一世；而我沿着沙滩走去，身边是阳光烘烤着的中西部女孩。“嗨，好啊。”几个字，纯美国味，后天练就，在我的唇间蓄势待发。但是，要真的走上前去，轻松随意地对一个女孩说出这几个字，所需的魄力却深植于脚底火热的沙层之下，所需的历史积淀远远厚过我的那张护照，那张印着我拇指指纹，一脸雀斑的护照。回到旅馆，《星际迷航》在73和31频道无休止地滚动播放，彩电上的星球都似乎有些褪色了，对于我却依然比我脚下的这个星球更为鲜明。

On the drive back to New York, I plugged myself firmly into my Walkman, hoping to forget our vacation. Sometime after the palm trees ran out, somewhere in southern Georgia, we stopped at a McDonald’s. I could already taste it: The sixty-nine-cent hamburger. The ketchup, red and decadent, embedded with little flecks of grated onion. The uplift of the pickle slices; the obliterating rush of fresh Coca-Cola; the soda tingle at the back of the throat signifying that the act was complete. I ran into the meat-fumigated coldness of the magical place, the larger Russians following behind me, lugging something big and red. It was a cooler, packed, before we left the motel, by the other mother, the kindly, round-faced equivalent of my own mother. She had prepared a full Russian lunch for us. Soft-boiled eggs wrapped in tinfoil; vinigret, the Russian beet salad, overflowing a reused container of sour cream; cold chicken served between crisp white furrows of a bulka. “But it’s not allowed,” I pleaded. “We have to buy the food here.”

驱车回纽约，我躲进我的随身听，期冀能把这个旅程忘记。不见棕榈树有一会儿了，进入南乔治亚有一段了，我们停在一家麦当劳。门外的我已经可以尝到那六十九美分的汉堡，那血红奢糜的番茄酱，和其中星星点点的蒜末。泡菜片会让人精神大振，可口可乐可以使你浑然忘我，苏打挑逗舌根，标志极乐已经圆满。我冲了进来，餐厅的冷气开到几乎可以用作杀菌，身后几个更高大的俄罗斯人，拖着一个红红的笨重家什。那是一个冷藏箱，是另外那家的母亲在我们离开汽车旅馆的时候准备的，和善的她其实就是一个我妈圆脸的翻版。她做了一份地道的俄式午餐，有锡纸包起的煮鸡蛋，一个废冰淇淋盒子几乎装不下的“危尼格莱”——著名的俄式沙拉，；还有用脆脆的“巴尔加”白面包夹着的凉鸡肉。“不能外带食物的”，我说，“得在这儿买。”

I felt coldness, not the air-conditioned chill of southern Georgia but the coldness of a body understanding the ramifications of its own demise, the pointlessness of it all. I sat down at a table as far away from my parents and their friends as possible. I watched the spectacle of the newly tanned resident aliens eating their ethnic meal—jowls working, jowls working—the soft-boiled eggs that quivered lightly as they were brought to the mouth; the girl, my coeval, sullen like me but with a hint of pliant equanimity; her parents, dishing out the chunks of beet with plastic spoons; my parents, getting up to use free McDonald’s napkins and straws while American motorists with their noisy towheaded children bought themselves the happiest of meals.

我觉得冷，不是因为南乔治亚的强劲空调，而是身体预见终老时所升起的一丝寒意，一切终将失去意义。我选了个桌子坐下，和父母他们越远越好。我遥遥望着那一队初来乍到者，皮肤新近晒黑，大嚼民族食品——下颚抬起，下颚落下——煮鸡蛋在唇前的震颤；而那个同龄的女孩，其实也和我一样生气，但却也有一丝心绪宁静，一丝妥协顺从；他爸妈，用塑料勺子挑出大块大块的甜菜；我爸妈，起身去拿麦当劳免费的餐巾纸和吸管；而此时美国父母，驾车出游至此，正和他们金发蓬松，吵嚷不已的孩子们分享世间最美妙的大餐。

My parents laughed at my haughtiness. Sitting there hungry and all alone—what a strange man I was becoming! So unlike them. My pockets were filled with several quarters and dimes, enough for a hamburger and a small Coke. I considered the possibility of redeeming my own dignity, of leaving behind our beet-salad heritage. My parents didn’t spend money, because they lived with the idea that disaster was close at hand, that a liver-function test would come back marked with a doctor’s urgent scrawl, that they would be fired from their jobs because their English did not suffice. We were all representatives of a shadow society, cowering under a cloud of bad tidings that would never come. The silver coins stayed in my pocket, the anger burrowed and expanded into some future ulcer. I was my parents’ son.

父母取笑我的高傲。孤零零地坐在那里，饥肠辘辘——孩子真是越长越怪了！一点也不像我们父辈。几个硬币挤在我的口袋里，买一个汉堡和一小杯可乐是够了。我谋划着要赢回我的尊严，掂量着抛弃我们甜菜沙拉的光荣传统。我的父母从不愿花钱，他们总觉得灾祸就在街前拐角处，或许是肝功能检查后医生一纸龙飞凤舞的诊断，又或许是因为会的单词不够而被炒了鱿鱼。我们是来自阴郁社会的典型，天边云涌，我们就蜷缩起来，其实那个大浪未必便会打来。那几个硬币还是呆在口袋里，任怒气在体内流转扩散，终有一天要凝成溃疡。我终究是我父母的孩子。