by Jean Stone
“Penny for your thoughts, lady.” It was Bert’s voice, behind her.
“Haven’t you heard of inflation?” she asked.
He wheeled around the bench and thrust a bunch of maroon mums at her. “Flowers for my lady,” he said.
“Where’d you steal them?”
“Front of the Dean’s Office.”
Susan laughed and took the scraggly bunch. “At least they’re not from Gardiner’s house.”
Bert scratched his beard. “Shit,” he said. “I didn’t think of that.” He sat beside her. “So how’re you doin’?”
Susan had told him on the phone of Jess’s visit, and of Mark’s reaction. “I guess as badly as I might want it in my fantasies, I’ve got to leave it alone.”
“You’re saying you’re not going to the reunion?”
“Right.”
“Because of Mark?”
“Because of Mark.”
Bert nodded and looked into the fountain. “That kid’s really got you wrapped around his little finger, doesn’t he?”
Susan felt her anger rise. “What are you talking about?”
Bert shrugged. “I think if you want to meet this other boy, you should. You asked for Mark’s support; he’s obviously not going to give it to you. But this is your decision. Mark won’t be with you many more years. This is your life, Susan. You’ve got another human being involved here too.”
“You’re saying what if my son shows up at the reunion and I don’t?”
“Exactly.”
Susan plucked a few petals off the mums and tossed them on the ground. “I resent being forced into doing anything. Especially something of this magnitude.”
“Would it be better if the kid just showed up at your door someday, unannounced?”
She plucked more petals.
“It could happen, Susan. You’ve probably always known that. It seems to me it would be better—for both of you—if you went. That way, if he’s not interested in meeting you, it’s his choice not to go.”
“What do I do if he does show up? What do I say to him?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“You’re so great on advice when it comes to family matters. Amazing. You, who are forty-eight years old and never had the guts to have one yourself.” She regretted her words as soon as she’d said them. Bert was too kind for Susan to treat like that. “I’m sorry,” she added quickly. “That wasn’t fair.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Did you bring any grass?”
“No. Want me to get some?”
“No.” She plucked at the blossomless stems. Her fingers had turned sticky and putrid. “I want to do the right thing. That’s why I talked to Mark first.”
“And that was the right thing.”
“But how can I go now? Knowing how he feels? He’ll take off for New York. He’s already threatened that.”
“He won’t do that. He loves you, Susan.”
She laughed without humor. “I doubt it.”
“Besides,” Bert continued, “he can’t stand Deborah.”
“Lawrence’s wife?”
Bert nodded.
“How do you know?”
“He told me once. He said she’s pushy, and she doesn’t like having him around.”
“He never told me.”
“Of course he didn’t. He doesn’t want to give you any more ammunition against his father.”
Susan half smiled at the thought of Lawrence’s wife as a bitch. But then her smile vanished. She didn’t like the idea that the woman was being cruel to Mark.
Bert returned to the subject. “I really think you’ve got to separate yourself from Mark on this. I think you’ve got to decide how you feel about meeting the boy and resolve what you’re going to do based on those feelings, and those alone.”
She tossed the remnant stems into the fountain. “I don’t know how I feel.”
They sat in silence.
“Do you want to tell me the rest?” Bert finally asked.
“The rest of what?”
“Why are you so afraid to meet him?”
“Afraid? I’m not afraid.”
Bert didn’t answer.
“Why would I be afraid?” Susan was aware her voice had gone up an octave.
“You’ve never told me about his father.”
The ache was back. It swelled in her stomach like a mass of knotted sponge. She wished she hadn’t thrown the flowers down. She needed something to hold on to. Susan stood and walked closer to the fountain.
“Were you in love with him?”
She nodded. She would have spoken, but she wasn’t sure the words would come out.
“Did he leave you? Is that why you were in the home for unwed mothers?”
She shook her head. “He never knew,” she managed to say. “I never told him.” She walked around the fountain until she came back to Bert. “During the Gulf War, every day I was afraid my son was there. My son. David’s son. I was afraid. And yet I knew there was no way I could have ever known.”
“Is that why you were glued to CNN the whole time?”
Bert was right. She had been glued to the TV. Between classes she’d planted herself in an orange plastic chair in the teachers’ lounge; at home she’d eaten dinner in front of the set and turned it on again in the morning before she’d even showered.
“Even that seems a lifetime ago. God, it’s been almost three years.”
“I cared about you then too, you know,”
She sat beside him again. “I was worried about Israel,” she said. “My heritage, in case you forgot.”
“That’s what you said at the time.”
She laughed and turned her head from Bert. “It was so odd. I guess I thought I’d see my son. I guess I thought I’d know him right away.” She looked at the ground. “I guess I thought he’d look like David.”
“In an army uniform?”
Susan smiled. “David and I were against the war in Vietnam. We were protesters.”
“You weren’t in Washington in ’67 were you? The big peace march?”
“We were there.”
Bert laughed. “Funny. I don’t remember seeing you.”
Susan couldn’t respond to his attempt at lightheartedness. “When I found out I was pregnant, I left David. I wasn’t into marriage. But I know now that I was all twisted up with my ‘socially right’ upbringing.”
“And you never saw him again?”
“No.” She did not, could not, tell Bert the rest. That David had joined the army. That he became one of the forgotten MIAs of Vietnam. She didn’t tell Bert not because of what he might say; it was simply that she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“And you never stopped loving him.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I suppose not. Oh,” she said, tossing back her hair, “there have been different periods of my life when I haven’t thought of him as often. Like when Lawrence and I were first married, and I put all my energy into trying to be a good Jewish wife.”
Bert laughed. “God, I would’ve loved to have seen that.”
“Or when I first came to Clarksbury,” she continued, “determined to be independent, and good at my job.”
“But the other times?”
“Oh, yeah. Those. Well, I guess David will always have a very special place in my heart. First love, and all that. Over the years I’ve worked very hard to keep that in perspective.”
“Is everything you do based on logic?”
Susan scowled. “What do you mean?”
“God, Susan, haven’t you ever followed your heart? Your own emotions?”
She thought for a moment. “Sure. When I left Lawrence.”
“That was different. You had no choice. You were drying up. What I meant was, haven’t you ever just let yourself love?”
She kicked at the limp petals on the ground. “Once,” she said. “Only once.”
At lunchtime Susan made pizza with extra cheese—Mark’s fav
orite food. He was subdued, but he ate. He did not mention their morning argument. Maybe he just needs time, she thought. Maybe we both do.
“So what’s on your agenda for the rest of the day?” Susan asked him as he plucked a piece of pepperoni from the pizza and plopped it into his mouth.
“Nothin’.”
“Any homework?” she asked. “It’s hard to believe you’re a junior.”
“No homework.”
“Are you sorry you missed the first few days?”
“Naw. Nothin’ ever happens then anyway. Besides, I like being at Grandma and Grandpa’s.”
“They liked having you. You mean a lot to them.”
“Yeah.”
“More pizza?”
“Nah. Are all my school clothes clean?”
“I did them yesterday. They’re in your room.” Good for you, Susan thought. Usually she’d have answered, “If you’d move a few things around in that mess you call a room, you’d have seen they’re all ready.”
“Thanks.”
Thanks? When was the last time her son had thanked her for anything? Guilt settled over her.
“Mark, about this morning …”
He waved her off. “Forget it. We all do what we gotta do.”
“I haven’t made a decision yet.”
He didn’t answer. He got up from the table. “Have you seen my Harvard football shirt?”
“It’s in your dresser.”
He took his plate and plopped it in the sink.
“Are you going out?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
Susan got up. She thought it best not to ask where he was going. She thought it best to give Mark a little space.
“I may go to the library. I’ve got to do some research for Lit Two.”
“Yeah,” he answered, and went off to his room.
Susan ran the dishes under soapy water and placed them in the dish drainer. At least he’s talking to me, she thought. Sort of.
An hour later Susan sat in the periodical room at the college library. She enjoyed the quiet of the building before classes began, when there were no frantic underclassmen cramming for term papers, no work-study students spending hours digging out materials that should be retrieved in a matter of minutes. She nearly had the place to herself. The high-ceilinged room was walled in polished oak, permeated with a sense of wisdom and comfort. It had been the library that had attracted Susan when she’d first come to Clarksbury: a place of solitude, a place conducive to finding inner peace. Today, however, that peace was elusive.
She sat at the table and thumbed through the big green volumes, looking for critiques on James Joyce, trying to drum up an interest in what she needed to do. But without realizing it, she had turned the pages to “Peace marches.” She scanned the listings. Then she got the microfilm.
She started with April 1968. The demonstration at Columbia. She studied the clippings. In hopes of what? Of seeing David’s name? Of reminding herself that he really did exist? Once. A long time ago. She moved past the photos of hand-painted placards and flower-painted children. She quickly went forward in time. She did not want to read the details. Amazing, she thought, that the touch of a button can quickly push you through an entire year that shaped a generation.
The articles on Vietnam were plentiful. “The Vietnam conflict.” God, she laughed to herself, that’s really what it was called. She had forgotten. Nearly sixty thousand American lives lost, and the press had called it a “conflict.” The press and the politicians. She shuddered at the grainy reproductions of photographs—American marines sloshing through rice paddies, carrying the dead and the wounded on their shoulders; Vietnamese children wearing nothing but diaperlike pieces of cloth, their mouths opened in horror. Susan turned off the machine. She could not read the articles. The pictures were reminder enough.
Why had she never tried to find David? Why—with all the publicity of the MIA issue in recent years—had she never tried to find out what had happened to him?
Bert had said she was afraid to find her son. Maybe she was. And maybe she’d been afraid to find David alive. Afraid he would find out about their son, and that their love would be irreversibly scarred.
That’s it, Susan thought, as she looked into the vacant gaze of a long ago soldier. She had needed to keep David’s love locked inside her, a memory that would forever be secure, unchallenged, unharmed. The only way she’d known how to do that was to become self-involved, to surround herself with an impenetrable shield, where she would be safe in the fantasy that David, dead or alive, still loved her.
She sat for a long time, staring into the black computer screen. Wasn’t it better to leave the past where it was? Nothing Susan could do could change what had happened, could make up for her mistakes.
Could it?
It was after dusk when Susan shuffled across campus toward home. From the quadrangle she could see the cottage was dark. She strained to see her watch in the dim light. Five minutes to eight. Was Mark still out?
She went up on the porch and let herself in through the front door. The house was quiet. That meant he wasn’t home. No music blaring, no Mark. These days it was one of the few things in life Susan could be certain of.
She tossed her notebooks on the couch and snapped on the old maple floor lamp. The red light on the answering machine was steady: no messages. She flicked off the machine and flopped on the couch, wishing Mark had left her a note. Teenage rebellion, she thought. No worse than anything I’d done. She sat for a few moments, letting her depression envelop her.
Upstairs, she thought. I’ll go upstairs and get into my nightgown and robe. That will make me feel better.
She climbed the narrow stairs. To the right was her tiny bedroom; to the left was Mark’s. As Susan turned into her room, she was overcome by a sense that something was wrong. She turned back and looked across the hallway. The door to Mark’s room was ajar. She stepped inside and turned on the pinup lamp. There was something wrong, all right. Mark’s room was neat. Susan’s heart raced with hope. There were no sweatshirts, socks, or jeans tossed in all directions, no scrambled piles of CDs or Nintendo cartridges. It was, she knew, a sign that he was trying to please her.
Suddenly Bert’s words echoed in her mind: That kid’s really got you wrapped around his little finger. Was the fact that Mark cleaned his room simply a manipulation on his part so she wouldn’t go through with the reunion? Was he trying to show Susan he was a good son? What’s more, was he trying to lay on the guilt?
She folded her arms across her waist. If this was his way of giving his opinion, it wasn’t going to work. Honesty was one thing, manipulation, another. And Susan was not going to be manipulated by her son. Bert was right. This had to be her decision, based on her needs.
She turned back toward the hallway when she spotted the door of his closet slightly open. He probably stuffed everything inside, and now the door won’t close, Susan thought. She walked toward the closet and turned the knob. The door closed easily. Too easily. She turned the knob again, then opened the door. Inside, the closet was empty.
Susan froze. Empty? How could it be empty? She stepped inside. Wire hangers jangled together. On the floor was a rumpled sweater Susan knew Mark had never liked, a Greenpeace sweatshirt she’d bought him on Martha’s Vineyard, and an old pair of shoes he had outgrown. Nothing else. The room started to spin. Susan leaned against the doorjamb. Mark had run away.
She clenched her jaw together. Lawrence. The bastard was responsible for this. Mark must have phoned him and told him about Susan’s reunion. She straightened her back and tore out of the closet, into the hallway, and down the stairs.
He can’t do this to me. The bastard can’t do this to me.
She grabbed the phone in the living room and punched at the numbers with a shaking finger. The bastard can’t do this to me.
The other end of the line was ringing.
“Hello?” It was a sweet, sickish voice. Deborah. A vision of a woman round and short, j
ust like Lawrence, sprang to Susan’s mind.
“Deborah, it’s Susan Levin. I need to speak with Lawrence.”
The woman placed the receiver down without comment to Susan. Bitch, she thought. Despicable bitch.
“Susan?”
“Where is he, Lawrence?”
Her ex-husband was silent. “Where’s who?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. Where’s Mark? Is he there?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mark. Your son.” The one who thinks you’re so perfect, she wanted to shout.
“Why would he be here?”
“Because where else would he go, dammit?”
“Susan. Calm down.” God, how she hated it when he patronized her. “What are you saying?”
She felt the tears close off her throat. She wouldn’t cry. Lawrence wasn’t going to get her to cry.
“He took his clothes,” she managed to say.
“Mark has run away?”
“Yes.”
She looked around the cramped living room. This place is such a dump, she thought. She pictured Lawrence standing in the foyer of his East Eighty-third Street town house. What kid wouldn’t rather live there?
“Jesus Christ, Susan, now what did you do?”
“What did I do? What makes you think I did anything?”
“Because I know you.”
His words stabbed her gut. I didn’t do anything, she wanted to scream. I was just going along, trying to live a peaceful existence, when along came this woman named Jess.…
“We had an argument.” She tried to sound composed. “Nothing extraordinary,” she lied. “We’ve argued before.” Her thoughts raced. If Mark wasn’t at Lawrence’s, where on earth had he gone? All she wanted to do now was hang up.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Around one o’clock. I left for the library about two.”
“You haven’t seen him since one o’clock this afternoon?” His words hung with accusation: Susan was a bad mother.
“He’s sixteen, Lawrence. I can hardly follow him around and wipe his nose.”