Lelya Dorche and the Coney Island Cure

By David Rothman

In April 2020, at the height of the pandemic in New York City, Andrew, the assistant director of a funeral home one mile from Elmhurst Hospital, the “epicenter of the epicenter,” meets a legendary Coney Island witch doctor (Lelya Dorche), who makes him an offer that could better his chances of keeping his COVID-positive elderly parents and his severely asthmatic 13-year-old son, Miro, off the ever-expanding list of virus mortalities. To keep up his end of the bargain, Andrew will have to find his way to Bulgaria (no small task considering that there’s a ban on passenger flights to Europe) to secure 10 liters of a rare Macedonian pine sap, a key ingredient of Lelya Dorche’s proven remedy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madville Publishing
• Release date: Jul 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781956440485

David Rothman

David Rothman teaches writing for the City University of New York. A novella, The Lower East Side Tenement Reclamation Association, won the Omnidawn 2018 fabulist fiction prize and was published in 2020. A short story, “Guided by Voices” won a fiction prize with Glimmer Train. Other short stories were published in such journals as Hybrido, The Prague Review, Newtown Literary, The Piltdown Review, among others. He is the drummer for the NYC-based band, The Edukators, and is a proud resident of Jackson Heights, Queens.

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Chapter One

April 10, 2020

Coney Island

When exactly did this insanity begin, I asked myself as I paced past the rowhouses on 21st Street toward Euclid Avenue, my vision still blurred from the large dosage of desperation vodka I had downed just a few hours earlier in Brighton Beach. Did it start last December in a seafood market in Wuhan, or some three weeks back when the virus descended upon our neighborhood and found its way into our home? Or just within the past fourteen hours when my entire world collapsed?

There was a chill in the air, and I snapped the top button of my jacket closed. I stopped at a corner deli to buy a ginger ale to calm my stomach before taking the long bike ride home. A Middle Eastern man behind a thick plastic divide spoke with a guttural accent. Leave exact change on counter, if you have it.

I continued down 21st, my cerebral cortex racing through a set of recurring images of what I had just witnessed with the natural healer. I began to question if any of this had actually happened, or if it were just an illusion, a creation of my demented mind. You never know.

My camera lens kept refocusing on the look of terror in Ivana’s eyes when Dr. Silverman, our pediatrician, spoke to us around midnight. An hour earlier, we had noticed a change in the rhythm of our son Miro’s nighttime cough as he lay in the bottom bunkbed next to his humidifier in the kids’ bedroom. This was an unfamiliar, shallower cough mixed in with his all-too-familiar, deeper, asthmatic coughing.

I was up late doing record-keeping of our sky-high numbers at the funeral home. Things were getting pretty grim. We would have to reconfigure our floor plan in order to fit more caskets in the main rooms. We would need to somehow find more refrigerated containers for the overflow. Scheduling socially distanced services added to our grieving clients’ anxiety.

I don’t feel good, Miro whined, and within seconds, Ivana was out of bed and on her feet, rushing to put our temperature gun to his forehead. 101. She shook her head. Not that high, but that’s the pattern.

We took our daughter Livia’s temperature and hers was normal. She was sitting at her desk and ignored me when I asked her to get as far away from her brother as possible. You gotta get out of this room now. I yelled at her like an army sergeant. Move your stuff to the living room. I’ll set up the pull-out. She didn’t budge. Our lovely Livia. Stubborn and seventeen. She rolled her eyes. I’m working on an art project. You can’t expect me to just stop and move everything. I ripped a collage right out of her hands, grabbed her hodgepodge bucket full of art supplies and marched them out of the room. Goddammit, move!

Ivana called Dr. Silverman and put him on speakerphone. We kept the volume low so Miro couldn’t hear. I’m not going to lie to you. if he tests positive, with his condition, it can be really serious.

Not fatal though, my voice cracked as I spoke.

There was a long pause, and I could hear the doctor exhaling. Fatal possibly, but let’s try to think positive.

That was when I first saw the look of terror in Ivana’s eyes.

Miro’s condition worsened throughout the night. His temperature hit 101.5 by three in the morning. His cough picked up. He said his throat was killing him. We rushed into Dr. Silverman’s office at 7 am, an hour before its official opening time.

After the rapid test came back positive, Miro disappeared into the bathroom to cry or to pee, or perhaps simply to hide away from fellow members of his species. We spoke with the doctor through an interior glass window that was designed to separate potentially infected patients and family members from the staff. You understand, he said. I’m no longer seeing patients in person. I’m doing this as a favor.

I nodded off his comment.

The doctor continued. Given his underlying condition, you need to be ready for the moment he has trouble breathing clearly. Dr. Silverman corrected himself, that is, if he has trouble with his breathing. This can go in any of a number of directions.

Ivana and I looked at each other and then back at him. Whatever you do, he said, Don’t take him to Elmhurst. It’s chaos there. I knew this already from my funeral work. We had found two unidentified bodies behind the make-shift ER tent just a few days back. Take an ambulance, if you can get one these days, out to Long Island Jewish. We watched the doctor exhale slowly into his surgical mask. He looked exhausted and defeated, powerless in his mission to heal. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Ivana’s eyes burned again for a second time with that look of terror.

We had driven home from Dr. Silverman’s office in silence, the only sound being our coughing boy quarantined in the furthest corner of the backseat. We sped down Queens Boulevard. The road was empty. During normal times, the rush-hour ride from Forest Hills home would have taken a good thirty-five minutes. We made it in twelve.

You’re both hypocrites! Livia greeted us from the far end of the kitchen. You, like actually sat in the same car as a COVID-positive person? I threw my jacket in the closet and rubbed my hands with sanitizer. I said: That person happens to be your brother! Ivana stepped into the kitchen and stared her daughter down. What’d you want us to do? Let him walk home? Luckily the situation was defused as Livia had to rush back to her virtual gym class, which she was Zooming in the bathroom.

Once our daughter was out of the picture and Miro was safely in bed, Ivana turned the depth of her angst on me. She started slamming the cupboards open and closed and I made the mistake of asking her what she was looking for.

What am I looking for? Ivana offered me a cynical stare. I’m looking for some peace of mind and you’re not helping! She slammed another cabinet closed. I need to tend to my son. He’s slipping away.

I glanced into Ivana’s panicked expression.

Why are you looking at me like that? she asked.

I’m not—

Yes, you are. She crossed her arms and raised her voice. You’re not getting anything I’m saying! I’ll quit my job at the hospital. I’ll move to a mountain village in Nepal, just don’t let them take…

I reached over to hug her, but she was now making a beeline to Miro’s bottom bunk. She pushed open the door as I followed close behind. She threw her hands up as if she were smacking the air. What are we gonna do if he can’t breathe? He was half-awake. She reached down and patted his sweating forehead.

I whispered, You can’t talk doomsday in front of him like that. Are you out of your mind?

She sat down on the hardwood floor, her knees brushing against the frame of the bed. Yes, I’m out of my mind. And it’s funny, Andy, that you’d be the one to ask cause you’ve been out of your mind your whole life!

Miro opened his eyes, clearly startled by all this drama, but then closed them again. Ivana reached for the laptop on the desk. She quickly opened something up on the screen and shoved the computer into my gut. She spoke, this time in a tense whisper. Here, read this. It’s about a boy who died yesterday in Seattle. Thirteen years old! Eosinophilic asthma. His name was Tommy.

I stared into the image on the screen. A healthy-looking brown-eyed boy in a baseball uniform. I placed the laptop back where it was and exited the room. Ivana followed me back into the kitchen. Say his name, Andrew! The boy in Seattle, or did you already forget it?

I turned towards her and placed my hands on her shoulders. We need to take a long deep breath together, and find—

Get off! She pushed my hands away. Leave me in peace. I took a step back as I thought she might take a swing at me. She grabbed a sharp knife off the wall and cut into a loaf of peasant bread. Just go.

But honey—

There’s nothing you can do to make him better, so you might as well give me some space.

But I don’t think—

Please. Ivana put down the knife and softened her voice for me. I’ll call you immediately if his condition worsens.

That’s when I decided to take a long bike ride to Coney Island. It wasn’t rational to be riding so far from my ailing child, but I had a desperate need to wet my head in the cold ocean water on Coney Beach 7, a good luck tradition going back to my childhood. I had got it into my head that this was the only way to protect my son from serious harm. When I grabbed my bicycle helmet from the hall closet, Ivana sensed exactly where I was going. You better bring an extra sweater. The beach is cold.

Chapter Two

After pedaling sixteen miles and pulling up on the Riegelmann Boardwalk just in front of the Beach 7 marker, I ran down the sand to the shoreline in my fall jacket and jeans and filled a half shell with ocean water. This is what I had done as a child when my sister Hester was in a coma after the accident. I was seven then. She was ten. I remembered how, when I grasped that large shell with my small hands, I had made no effort to draw the attention of any Gods in the sky. I had just looked out to the deep part of the sea, and said, pretty please. A second later, an impulse had me pouring the cool September water held in the shell over my head.

My sister made it through the night, so I returned and did it again the next day and the next. On the fourth day of her coma, there was a torrential downpour that lasted the entire day and I didn’t make it out of our apartment on West 23rd. Hester died late that night.

Now I was back again, for my son, and the cold water dripped down my forehead. I looked up and down the shoreline to see if anyone was spying on my ritual. The beach was pretty deserted. I texted Ivana. I’m worried about Miro.

She wrote back in seconds. Will call if any change. If so, just drop your bike and Uber home!

Some minutes after performing the shell ritual, my phone rang. I noticed the word Mom written across my phone screen and accepted the call. My mother made small talk about the neighbors and shared an idiotic statement the president had made. Of course, she had no idea about Miro’s situation.

I stood on the windy beach holding the phone to my ear. Oh, I almost forgot, my mother said. I think Dad might have the virus. I thought I hadn’t heard her right, so I asked her to repeat what she’d said. She spoke louder this time. I said your father has the virus.

My hands began to spasm. You think he has it, or is it just an idea in your head? My mother wasn’t as sharp as she had once been.

Her voice got calmer, the way it did when she realized that she might be upsetting me. He’s in bed. He has a light fever. He’ll be fine.

I was pacing back and forth in the sand. Did he get a test result or not?

There was a long pause before my mother answered in the cadence of a skeptical Jew. What can you do? He’s got it. That’s life."

No, I thought to myself. That’s death. My phone fell from my hands in to the sand. I quickly bent down to pick it up but had lost the connection My parents were eighty-five years old. COVID’s perfect victims. If my father had it, then surely my mother had it too. The two of them spent twenty-four hours a day right next to each other, with the exception of occasional bathroom visits.

I sat on the cold sand watching a family of sandpipers feed on the innards of a dead crab, their sharp beaks ripping into the bony flesh. I imagined losing both of my parents and becoming an instant orphan. There were eight and half months left of this horrid year, 2020, and I wondered if any of us who made it to 2021 would survive the trauma.

On an impulse, I decided to shed myself of all this hell by getting naked and cleansing my body in the frigid saltwater. I dared not look around as I quickly got down to my underwear, then threw them on top of my clump of clothing and stepped into the water.

The ocean was tranquil this time of the morning with soft waves forming and cresting, but never quite breaking. I ducked my head under the water and could see Hester’s ten-year-old face reflected off our shared Libbyland flicker mug. This was the only image I still had the power to conjure up of my lost sister. Around my seventh birthday, we had cut out a coupon found on the back of one of our mac and cheese Libbyland TV dinners and convinced our mother to send it with a check to some office far, far away. When it finally arrived a month later, Hester and I agreed that our shared mug was worth the wait. As you turned the plastic mug in a clockwise direction, the scenes changed, the characters transformed themselves into other Libbyland characters. The Libby mermaid’s tale would wave. A second later, the Libby dragon’s long tongue would flap left and right. In our bunkbed at night, Hester would shine her mini flashlight down at the mug as I turned it round and round from my bottom bunk, both of us gasping at the flickering image of Pirate Jim’s sinister smile. It was equal parts scary and wondrous.

Right there in the murky water, I saw the mug and heard Hester’s voice. Can you see me, Drew? That’s what my sister called me. Can you hear me?

I considered swimming far out to sea, beyond the point of no return. By joining my sister prematurely, I could leave this ambush of death behind. My son would somehow find peace, my parents would finagle their way out of death’s path, and Ivana and Livia would, at the least, eat pretty well for a while. The big fat life insurance check would also take care of Livia’s college tuition. It didn’t sound so bad.

But I couldn’t. The weight of immediate responsibility drew me away from such thoughts.

With my teeth chattering, I got dressed and made it back to the boardwalk, and as I did, a text came in from my friend, Cleon. You still in Coney?

I had texted Cleon some two hours earlier before I took off from Jackson Heights. I had badly needed the solace of my oldest friend. I held the phone tightly to my ear just inside the hard plastic of my bicycle helmet and spoke into its invisible speaker. Still here. Meet me at Druzhba in ten.

Cleon meant a lot to me. He had known my sister Hester. The truth was, other than my parents, and an aunt and uncle out in Long island, I didn’t know anyone else alive who had. Cleon had the same first and last name as our favorite New York Mets star growing up. Cleon Jones. It was just a coincidence, but he milked his baseball hero connection as often as he could. Don’t mess with Cleon Jones. Autograph for sale.

I met him when we both worked at my Uncle Harry’s funeral home on Euclid Avenue. He was the smartest kid at Lincoln High, got a college biology degree, but ended up as the store manager of the Pathmark supermarket two blocks from the Wonder Wheel.

Before biking over to Druzhba in Brighton, I called Ivana. How’s Miro?

He’s weak. Just grab some paper towels on your way home.

Let me speak to him.

He’s taking an online science quiz. Ivana sounded tense.

He’s sick. He should take the day off, I said.

He doesn’t want to.

Ask him to take a break for a sec.

It’s a timed quiz. You wanna speak to Livia? She’s right here.

Livia? At the sound of my only healthy child’s name, a wave of paranoia swirled over me, and I squeezed the back of my left ear two times to ward off any dark thoughts. On a day this awful, with all of this bad news coming at me from all directions, I didn’t want to hex my still healthy daughter. I squeezed the back of my left ear twice again. No, that’s okay. Kiss her for me. I gotta go.

Are you okay, Andrew?

I left Ivana’s question hanging in the air and took the short ride to Brighton Beach. The bar was closed, but I found Igor, the aging owner hosing down the aluminum siding in the back. I got his attention and gestured a request for a drink. He turned off the water and gave me a Russian shrug. I said, Make that a double Stoli, and he did.

Hard day? Igor inquired as he filled the shot glass.

Don’t ask. I took a seat at a white plastic table out front and waited for Cleon.

It was unseasonably cold for early April and a heavy wind threatened to topple the Smirnoff umbrellas outside Tatyana’s cafe, just a few doors down. The boardwalk was nearly empty. A pair of older Russian men hovered over a chessboard on a bench. A limping child came running off the sand. A woman in a fur coat jogged by with a French poodle.

My eyes traced the never-ending sky over the sea. It seemed there was no sun all the way to Greenland.

I had almost forgotten to text my boss, Gunisha, or perhaps hadn’t exactly forgotten, but had put off contacting her out of shame. I had gone back to work just three days ago, after my quarantine, and would now have to take a leave of absence to deal with this hell. But what about Gunisha’s hell? She was buried in this onslaught of death. I’d been working in funeral homes for thirty years and had never experienced anything like what we’d experienced these past few days.

Well, whadaya say? It’s Superman!

Cleon appeared out of nowhere in his New York Knicks jacket. It almost matched his orange N-95 mask. Andy B, that’s what he called me, I hear you’re post-Covid. Been there, done that. Good to go.

I tried to greet my friend with a smile but couldn’t fathom one. Well, that’s what they say. I signaled for Cleon to take a seat at the small table adjacent to mine, and he did. I hadn’t seen him in about a month, which was a long time for us. He looked wiped out, the wrinkles under his eyes more pronounced, his Afro thinner and grayer.

I’m sorry I missed your text before. Just been pure chaos at the supermarket. We’re running out of products. No spaghetti! Can you imagine? Cleon signaled to Igor that he’d like a drink. And some of my customers are downright idiots. Not following the distance signs. If one more local complains about the empty toilet paper section…I’m gonna lose it. Cleon laughed