How We Remember

by J. M. Monaco

  ‘It was for the best JoJo,’ she said, smiling.

  I cried and said, ‘I’m so happy to see you, Nonna. Please don’t go. Don’t leave me. Please.’ I reached out and tried to touch her. I wanted to feel her flesh.

  ‘Oh, I’ll be back, honey. Don’t you worry,’ she said before she faded away.

  And she kept her promise, pops by every now and then in my dreams, hugs me and says how nice it is to see me.

  ‘Well, if Peggy can’t come then it won’t look good having Josie, so, why don’t we just tell them the wedding is going to be too small to invite all the American family,’ said Ma on the long-distance line. ‘You and Jon can come home afterwards, in another few months when you get a break, and we’ll have a party for you here. Yes, let’s do that. That’ll be nice.’

  I agreed at the time as I often did, but we never made it for a visit so my mother’s other wedding party never happened.

  In addition to our own list of friends, Jon’s parents, Marion and Henry, invited his uncle and aunt and cousins. Marion’s brother came with his wife and family. Jon’s brother Max and sister Yvonne were there with their spouses and toddlers and everyone appeared cheery, overall. My father even managed to behave himself, smiled a few times, ubiquitous toothpick and all (couldn’t get him to agree to take out the earring) and pretended to enjoy the meal when he met Marion and Henry. The next day at the restaurant he laughed with cousin Dan while they drank whisky shots and beer.

  Henry knew just how much to socialise and when to step back. Another drink handed to Ma and Dad, a compliment to my mother about her dress, a comment about the beauty of her daughter, the bride who was so photogenic.

  Marion was another matter.

  Having to bear the embarrassment of inviting the Jewish relatives to her son’s non-Jewish wedding to witness him hitching up with a gentile, a Catholic-born one, to make matters worse, Marion displayed a controlled uneasiness throughout the day. The first thing that struck me as odd was that she appeared to hold on to her handbag most of the time at the restaurant, even kept it on her lap while eating the main course, which she only finished partially. I wondered if she was unwell and was preparing herself for a fast exit if necessary. Her strained face looked as if she might have been suffering from a stomach upset or maybe a bad case of trapped wind.

  Our formal union hit Marion hard. She’d been expecting it, yes, like the prospect of her unavoidable mortality one day, but she hung on to slim hopes that the Grim Reaper would allow her another fifty years or so of contentment before he came knocking. Our marriage was the end of the line, for Marion, of her Jewish history. While I was more than happy to give up my past and the Catholic brutality that went with it, she didn’t want Jon to give up his, no matter how hard he tried.

  I don’t think I can ever forget Marion’s fully embodied suffering of pure grief that day. Her mourning was accentuated by the long black and grey dress she chose. While the rest of the family smiled on demand, her expression was blank in the photos. Still attractive with her professionally coloured chestnut shoulder-length hair and careful make-up, Marion’s eyes looked tired, her shoulders rounded when they were usually held back. There was one shot of her and my mother standing together, Marion’s face a bit stunned by the demands of the camera, her hand grasping that handbag. One of my mother’s hands was squeezing Marion’s shoulder, the other held a glass of rosé as if to make a toast, her tipsy smile working hard to lighten things up. My mother was unwavering in her desire to have fun that day. For this, I was most grateful and proud.

  I didn’t resent Marion. In fact, I wished I could have taken her to the side and apologised for everything. For breaking that precious crystal wine-glass the first night we met (part of their twenty-fifth anniversary present, she said) when I must have had a tad too much of that nice bottle of Shiraz. For talking and laughing too loud. For not knowing enough about her world, for not being what she wanted me to be for her and her son. I wanted to be able to offer them all another version of me, but there was only so far I could go to conceal what had been before, the things that made me. By that time I had learned this much.

  Over the years Marion accepted I was there to stay, like a permanent fixture that comes with a new house purchase you know you’ll have to learn to live with. Eventually it dissolves into the surroundings so much that it ceases to irritate. After a while you realise you might even miss them if they were gone. After much time passed, I was beginning to look like a gem in disguise compared to what Jon’s siblings married.

  The family witnessed Jon’s brother, Max, go through a messy divorce with his Jewish wife, Jill, who decided to take time off from her high-powered law career to raise their two children. In her misery with her plight she proceeded to torture him regularly with accusations that he was a terrible father and a neglectful husband who spent more time at the office or with women with whom he was having affairs.

  ‘I’ll tell you Jo,’ she said to me one evening after a meal when we were washing up. Over the earlier years Jill had put on weight, not a little, but a lot, and she hated herself for it. ‘He thinks I don’t know, that I’m a fool. But let me tell you, I may be a fat cow now, but I don’t deserve this. He comes home and I can smell her on him. I know these things.’

  Max pleaded with her, swore those stories were not true, he’d never dream of cheating on her. His children, those future messiahs in the family, were his life, as was his beautiful wife, extra post-baby pounds and all, of course, his only reason for waking up and breathing every day. He would stab himself fifty times, no, one hundred, two hundred times in the heart before turning his back on them. Max had my sympathies; her constant shouting at him and the little ones was enough to drive anyone out the door to spend more time at a boring office job or into the arms of another. This seemed to me evidence of what could happen to some women who gave up their souls, and their designer wardrobes, for their children.

  Jon’s sister, Yvonne, also ended up divorced from her Jewish husband, Nathan, whom she’d met when she was at nursing school as he was just finishing his medical degree. He was the ideal catch, a promising young surgeon, every Jewish mother’s dream. But it wasn’t long after their two children were both in primary school when Yvonne discovered bits of evidence here and there, a bank statement showing large amounts of cash withdrawals, unexplained absences, and, finally, a packet of condoms in the bottom of his briefcase.

  Jon was right once again. Landing a Jewish partner, a high-flying doctor or a lawyer at that, offered no guarantee for life-long happiness or stability.

  Marion had a habit of internalising pain when watching her children suffer through their divorces. ‘He fooled us all, that charmer,’ she said of Nathan. ‘I couldn’t sleep at night when I heard, I was so upset. I am still upset, I don’t know what to do, it makes me so sick. I can’t sleep at night, not a wink.’ She placed her hand on her heart and sighed. ‘He came across as so sincere and from that family of his. Who would have known? Who knows how long he would have carried on before she found out? It’s the children who suffer most. They’re the innocents. Oh, I feel a pain in my heart.’

  I agreed the children didn’t deserve all the shit that came their way, but somehow they would get over it, I told her. It’s incredible how resilient kids can be. What I really wanted to do was take hold of her tense shoulders in my hands, shake and rattle her, make her understand that this break-up stuff was peanuts compared to bigger problems. Far worse things could happen in families. After all, I thought, didn’t they have a pretty good life? Yvonne would do well out of the deal financially and her little angelic Lily, who loved her dancing lessons, and her older brother Benny, who had picked up a keen interest in chess and piano, would never be short of money, or attention for that matter from their doting mother and grandparents on both sides. Jon and I were also around to help pick up the pieces when they were working their way through the early rubble of it all. We were always there for those kids when they were growing up. Endless
tiring trips to central London through the crowds at the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, London Transport Museum, British Museum and whatever other bloody museums could be found. I never would have imagined there were so many of those places, so many of those tired screaming kids.

  And we witnessed all four of Jon’s nephews and niece throughout their spotty-faced, grumpy, hormonal teen years, develop into decent, educated young adults facing the world the best way they could. Messiah material they were not, but they all managed to buckle down, get their degrees, find work and earn their own crust. No drug addicts. No jail time. No psychos.

  Marion never brought up the subject of children, perhaps because any future grandchildren that resulted wouldn’t technically be Jewish. I was never really sure why my views changed and I felt the urge to have my own child. I can assume now it was most likely an internalisation of what society expected of me. I told myself I’d better put my hesitations aside and just get on with the task, as so many other so-called normal, functioning women do. I guess some of the time Jon and I spent with his niece and nephews also helped me to see that having our own family might not be all that bad. Jon was caring and patient with them in a gentle, paternal way I had never noticed before with the men in my family. And in spite of some of the usual irritations (why is it that children just can’t stop interrupting all the time?), they did manage to elicit a smile on my face every now and then.

  Dear Jo. We had so much fun at the zoo the other day seeing the monkeys and eating ice cream. You are the best aunt in the whole wide world. Will you and Jon take us to the cinema next weekend? Or maybe the zoo again. I love you so much. Lily.

  Although it was still relatively early days in my PhD studies, I became pregnant almost a year after our wedding. Even early on in the pregnancy, although I did feel more tired than usual, I felt better physically overall and was relieved from the usual aches and emotional lows that always arrived before my periods. I didn’t get hit hard with morning sickness and Jon was convinced that my complexion had a special healthy sheen. When alone in the flat I would stand for some time in front of our full-length bedroom mirror gazing with pride at my belly, wondering when a more definitive bump would appear.

  It was around week ten or so when we both talked about the potential sex of the child, what it would look like, whose traits it would adopt. Jon enjoyed imagining the fun of teaching the child how to read, how to ride a bike, wrapping up together under a blanket in front of the television on a rainy day. But it wasn’t long after week eleven when I experienced bad cramps, then the start of bleeding. It happened at work not long after a teaching session, a workshop I held on art and political activism that had gone fairly well, in spite of feeling nausea midway. Ah, I thought, of course, this is the morning sickness everyone talks about. I welcomed it. This is what we mothers must go through.

  And later – the terrible pain.

  We both cried at the disappointment, at nature’s cruelty, the way it had pulled us along, the way it allowed us to indulge in ourselves. We wept, inwardly, when we saw couples with babies.

  ‘Just look away. Don’t look,’ Jon would whisper. And then he would close his eyes and sigh.

  ‘I can’t believe how many there are,’ I said one evening after dinner that week. ‘Suddenly. Out of nowhere, all these pregnant women. All looking so happy. People offering them seats on the tube.’

  Jon said, ‘Yeah. We just heard in the office today that the department secretary is pregnant, now planning maternity leave. Oh well. Best not to tell anyone in the early days. All the excitement and then you have to turn around and tell them the bad news.’

  I hadn’t told anyone our secret, but that week when I spoke to my mother on the phone, I spilled the beans and cried. You still end up facing it, one way or another. At first I thought I heard her gasp for breath and I imagined she must have moved her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Oh. Oh, Jo.’ She was sorry, of course, so, so sorry, and after offering the usual platitudes, she said, ‘It’s so common, more common than you might realise. You still have time. And I’m always willing to be a grandmother again whenever God wills it. If only you were here.’

  Jon’s rational disposition kicked in to remind us also how common miscarriages were and convinced us we should try again. Six months later I was pregnant again, only to have to live through another miscarriage around week twelve.

  My consultant, Professor Michael Houghton, said while there could be a small risk that the cervix may have been ‘compromised’ by my earlier abortion after Brendan left me, which I had to confess to Jon in my first pregnancy, cases of cervical incompetency, when the cervix is weak and can cause miscarriage, usually occurred in the second trimester.

  ‘And from what I’ve seen it looks like you’ve got a healthy, strong cervix there,’ he said with a tone of light optimism, as though commending me for sticking to a great exercise regime. ‘Unfortunately early miscarriages can happen, but we’re not entirely sure why they recur. In most cases many future pregnancies will come to full term. You’ve probably just been unlucky.’

  While he tried to reassure me it was in good working condition, I imagined my cervix sitting back, taking it easy, having one too many cigarette breaks, then getting fired, with me paying the dues for its lazy-ass incompetency, its failure to do the basic satisfactory work for which it was designed.

  ‘We’ve got plenty of time, Jo, there’s no rush,’ sensible Jon said the following week. ‘To be honest, I’m feeling like maybe we’ve rushed things a bit too much. There’s so much going on this year at work and you still have the PhD to finish. Maybe this was a sign we need to slow down.’

  I poured my energies into the PhD, which I was relieved to pass with no corrections. Soon after I was lucky enough to be offered a permanent, full-time tenure-track lecturer’s job. My first newly designed second year undergraduate programme was a great success and I invested my research time into turning my PhD thesis into a book. Deciding to put the baby business on hold for a while, Jon and I moved fast forward with our academic ambitions and didn’t let anything stand in our way.

  We got a thrill out of those busy periods when we worked in the flat simultaneously, rat-tat-tat, tapping away at our keyboards, like two content hummingbirds in sync in the evenings and weekends, and treated ourselves with walking breaks in the park, expensive evening meals out and jazz nights with friends. We would chat away excitedly about our next research plans, or we’d gripe about others at work who weren’t pulling their weight, those colleagues with families who always seemed to take too much time off. Jon got a promotion and we managed to find a bargain small, three-bedroom house across the city in north London in need of lots of work, but a worthwhile investment. We devoted any extra time we had to studying interior design magazines, trying out paint samples, hunting down the right builders, carpenters, and bargain furnishings. If I was an outsider observing us I would have hated the sight of our smug faces and run a mile to avoid us at parties.

  When I reached my late thirties we talked about trying to conceive again, that big now or never question. By the time we hit the bedroom the passion we used to have had been usurped by our endless discussions about the pros and cons of producing a baby, if indeed, we said, with caution, we made it past the twelve-week mark next time. Pros: Someone else to look after and love and make us less selfish. Someone to put a smile on our faces when we played with it, like a puppy. Someone to look after us when we grew old. Someone to pass on our assets to. Someone to replace us when we die, to maintain healthy population numbers. Cons: Giving birth hurts like hell. Too many sleepless nights. You get fatter, then miserable, look at what happened to Jill. Well, she was kind of miserable anyway. Too much worry over him/her. No guarantee he/she will be healthy or happy. What if the child hates us or turns into a psychopath? What if we hate him or her? Too expensive. The cons were adding up.

  In spite of our concerns we conceived again. I took extra care of myself, adhered closely to an ev
en more tedious, expensive, organic-diet regime before the word organic became a middle-class necessity. I made sure I got more sleep with no late nights, made sure I didn’t stand on my feet for lengthy periods of time, which wasn’t too much of a problem. Like air pollution-paranoid urban travellers in China and Japan, I resorted to covering my mouth and nose with a surgical mask when I travelled on the underground to avoid breathing in the airborne soot particles I was convinced were going to kill my baby. I took a week off work when I didn’t have to teach so I could join a meditation for pregnant women’s workshop and contemplate a peaceful future.

  Despite all these efforts, I was unlucky and miscarried near the end of the first trimester.

  I guess it was no surprise to me that the same degree of disappointment I experienced the previous two times hadn’t returned. I had grown accustomed to bad news. I convinced myself there was a good reason why I would never bear a child, that I was never meant to have responsibility for another life. In fact, it all felt pretty simple. God and the Catholic Church, I believed, were having their last laugh for my earlier dirty sins. I didn’t want to think about any future pregnancies, the possibility of IVF, or adoption. I made it clear to Jon I wanted it to end there. I learned to appreciate that I’d probably been spared from making what might have been the biggest mistake of our lives and I began to feel some relief for not presenting Jon with a dark, cursed future.