Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  JAKE, I DO realize at this point in the book that I’m not giving you as much advice as I meant to—in fact, when I originally started planning this project, I was thinking in terms of something that would intertwine autobiography and advice, so not only would you learn all about me, but you’d also learn whatever wisdom I have to pass on to you. I suppose, when I started this, I thought I’d have more wisdom. But here it is now, six in the evening, a long day, dinner almost ready in the house across the lawn, and I’m right where I was two weeks ago. There you are, once again playing hide-and-seek with Dustin somewhere near the water (don’t fall in, Jesus Christ, you know that, right?) Allie is grilling chicken on the patio and Camilla is standing next to her, gesticulating wildly, and Ross is in all likelihood phone-sexing with Asha, depending on what time of day it is in Mumbai, and I’m just now worrying I have no wisdom to give you at all.

  Two weeks ago when I started this, your father was a bad memory and a dim idea. Now he was on his way. July 4 weekend. Happy birthday, America.

  I wanted you to think he was fine but not better than fine. I wanted you to like him but not love him.

  But also I guess . . .

  Well, you should know you were conceived (Is this something you want to know? Probably not—you can skip these pages if they gross you out, but just in case . . .) in a happy place. I mean, your dad and I had only six months together, but I believe they were very happy months.

  We escaped sometimes to the Maryland shore or drove together to Delaware.

  One night, we ate crabs and drank beer in a barn somewhere between cornfields and the Atlantic and then danced to country music till midnight. We line danced—we had no idea how to line dance! Another time we went to an Orioles game. Another time we had a righteous New York City date, kissed on top of the Empire State Building like tourists. There was that one time we saw three movies in one day.

  The day after Griffith won his primary, I did two minutes of postgame analysis on MSNBC, and then your father met me at the studio—which was, conveniently, just down the road from his house in New Jersey—and took me for breakfast at a Korean joint in Fort Lee, the kind of place that served kimchi with its eggs. He would have made me something at his house, but the only thing he knew how to cook were pancakes, which I was sick of.

  Anyway, I was wearing too much makeup, a terrible plum-colored blazer, but I was so high off the victory that I didn’t care what I looked like, and your father—he thought I was beautiful. He told me so.

  “I was watching you on the monitor when you were talking,” your father said to me as I was forking up my eggs. “You looked beautiful. You are beautiful.”

  I put down my fork, embarrassed. Was he teasing me? I’d let myself grow too comfortable around him. I’d told him I was sick of his pancakes. “No,” I said.

  “Really.”

  I shook my head. There was a bright pendant light swinging over our table. I could see a faint trace of veins in your father’s broad forehead, and a smattering of freckles, like your freckles, on his pale skin. “You are, Karen,” he said. “I don’t know why you don’t believe me.”

  I kept my gaze on his forehead so I wouldn’t break. “Because nobody ever told me that,” I whispered. Allie was the pretty one.

  “Then let me be the one to tell you.”

  Your father, Jake. Let me tell you. Your father.

  We didn’t see each other as much as I wanted—my work, his schedule—but we did see each other an awful lot, and if it wasn’t love like I thought it was, it certainly—well, it was something. And not just tender moments in Korean restaurants either. Your dad loved to laugh. If you asked him what his favorite movies were, he’d say, in all seriousness, Airplane or The Naked Gun or Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. He had no patience whatsoever for serious movies or grim television; the very idea of Mad Men drove him crazy. Who needed weird set pieces about the sixties when the world was so full of weirdness and lunacy and sadness and anger? I tried to argue for the artistic value, or maybe just the cultural obligation, of art to examine human outrageousness and anger, but he would wave me off. He was not a simple guy, your dad, but he liked his pleasure simple.

  I wonder but I am trying not to wonder what he would have thought if I told him you’d been born. He liked his pleasure simple and you being born would have made his life less simple. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want kids all those years ago. He wasn’t afraid of global warming; he was afraid of complication. He somehow understood more than most people that having kids means losing control. I thought I knew him, but I guess I knew only one part of him, the part that was easiest for him to show.

  It seems to me, Jacob, that when the time comes for you to pick a life partner, you should pick someone who behaves well in a crisis. It’s very easy to think you know someone—it’s very easy to think you know yourself—when life is calm and orderly, movie dates on Saturdays, chicken dinner at seven. But people become their truest selves in emergencies. Selfish people jump into the life raft first. Cowards sneak out the back door. Liars say whatever it takes to get out of trouble. Craven people walk away from what they’ve wrought. But good, morally sound people take responsibility for their actions and stand up for the people they care about, even if they put themselves at risk. Even if they put their own desires second. I want you to choose someone who is good and morally sound. Make that your first priority when you decide who you want to spend your life with. I promise you, Jacob, that person will be out there, and you will be happier with that person than you ever would have been on your own.

  I’m not saying your father should have immediately changed his mind about children when he found out I was pregnant. But at the very least I think he should have tried.

  I COULD SEE across the lawn that the grill was closing down, and sure enough my phone buzzed; I was being called for dinner. Camilla was setting the table on the patio—the sky was gray but the drizzle seemed to be holding off—and in a few minutes we’d all assembled, you and Dustin, Ross and Camilla and Allie, and Bruce, home unexpectedly early. He kissed the ladies on the cheek, ruffled the boys’ hair, even Ross’s, even yours.

  “How’d you get out of work before six?” Allie asked Bruce, passing around a big salad. Your aunt was not exactly a domestic goddess—she didn’t get too freaked out about dirty laundry, say—but she did a nice job of putting together dinner: grilled vegetables, grilled chicken, salad, a big loaf of bread. It looked like the sort of thing a magazine would call an “easy weeknight supper” but that would have taken me, at home, hours to figure out. I’m sorry to say that you and I ate way too much takeout in New York, way too many sandwiches. You’d eat better once you moved here, I was sure.

  “Ross texted me. Said he wanted to have a chat.” Bruce poured white wine for the grown-ups while Ross picked a nail. I wanted Bruce to pour him some too, but he didn’t, because Ross wasn’t really a grown-up. “So what’s going on?”

  “Just . . . I don’t know.” He was doing that thing teenage boys do, gunning his foot up and down under the table.

  “You don’t know? You said you wanted to talk.”

  “Here,” you said to Ross, and extracted something from the pocket of your sweatshirt. It looked like one of those shriveled skulls from old adventure movies: your power gourd. “This’ll help.”

  “Thanks,” Ross said, taking the gourd from your little hands. We were all quiet for a minute, assessing it. Ross put the gourd on his plate, thought better of it, held it aloft.

  “I’ve been sleeping with it,” you said. “Like you told me to.”

  “You have?” said Ross and Allie and I at the same time.

  “What the hell is that?” Bruce asked.

  “It’s a ceremonial power gourd from Guatemala,” you said, and I couldn’t believe you remembered what it was called or that the country was named Guatemala, even though of course you remembered that, you remembered everything. “I’ve been sleeping with it so I don’t get bad dreams.”

&
nbsp; “Does it work?” Ross asked.

  “Have you been having bad dreams again?” I asked.

  You shrugged, ripped a piece of skin off your chicken with your grubby hands. I should have made you wash. “Only sometimes. Not like before.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Before was worse.”

  Before referred to that terrible time after we met with Dr. Susan and she explained to you what was happening to me because I couldn’t find the words. And even though she did it in the most clinically approved way, and even though we both emphasized that I would be here for a long time and that the doctors were going to work as hard as they could to keep me healthy, you started having screaming nightmares every night and ending up in bed with me, where you would kick me in the scar and thrash, but still I did not have it in me to put you back in bed. I didn’t have the physical strength; I didn’t have the will. That was a year ago now, when you were just five, and I don’t know what the hell we were thinking. Why, again, was it necessary to tell a not-quite five-year-old his mother had cancer? Just because it was true?

  “What are you dreaming about, Jake?” I asked.

  “I keep thinking that you won’t be able to find my dad,” you said with those little guilt-making eyes of yours, and I gulped my wine to keep from slashing my wrists with my knife.

  “I found him,” I said after I put my wineglass down.

  “You did?” you asked. “When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “He wants to come see you,” I said. “July 4 weekend.”

  “July 4?” you said. “How many days is that?”

  “July 4?” Allie said. “Aren’t we going away?”

  “That soon, huh,” said Bruce. “That seems a little soon.”

  “How many days is that?” you demanded, and suddenly I felt like the cruelest person ever born, to keep you and your father away from each other when you were both counting days, but then I reminded myself of my righteous rage and set my lip.

  “Mommy!”

  “Seven days,” I said. “It’s seven days from now.”

  “Seven days! That’s not far!”

  “He’s flying here?” asked Camilla. “From New York?” I really didn’t want to get into the details with you there so I just nodded noncommittally, but you had already grabbed the power gourd back from Ross and were squeezing it between your hands. You had a look I’d seen only a few times before: when I got you the Batcave you wanted so desperately for your sixth birthday, when we brought home Kelly the hamster from the pet store. You were looking determined to make the most of what you’d been given: you were half-smiling, you were bashful and ecstatic.

  “Seven days isn’t even very long,” you said to the gourd.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. What was I doing? What had I done?

  “So that’s great, Karen, it’s great he’s coming,” Ross said. “Also I wanted to just say I’m thinking about going to India next year instead of U Dub, okay? I want to move to Mumbai.”

  “What?” said Allie.

  “Why?” said Camilla.

  “That’s not what we planned on,” said Bruce mildly, cutting his chicken. “I thought you wanted to stay close to home.”

  “I’m kind of rethinking that.”

  “Is it your girlfriend?” Camilla asked; Ross sent her death glares.

  “Is Mumbai the same thing as Bombay?” Allie asked. “Is that what they call it now?”

  “Yes, Mom,” Ross said. “It’s the same.”

  “Watch your tone.”

  “Wait, aren’t we still talking about July 4?” Dustin said, looking at you. “Jakey’s dad?” You were still in your blissed-out trance, you and your gourd.

  “Whoa there,” said Bruce. “Just—whoa there. Who said anything about Mumbai? Who’s this girl?”

  “Asha,” Ross said. “From Guatemala. I told you?” he said, with a tone that suggested he didn’t actually tell his father anything but wanted him to believe that he had.

  But Bruce hadn’t gotten this far in life by being a fool. “I don’t think you did, Ross.”

  “No, I definitely—” Ross let his voice get small. “I definitely did.”

  “Jakey,” Dustin said, “aren’t you excited to meet your dad?”

  You rolled your eyes at him. “Um, yeah,” you said.

  “What do you think he’s like?”

  “I think he’s awesome.”

  “Why do you think that?” Dustin asked, having shoved half a chicken breast in his mouth so that he was talking through a pasty bolus.

  “Because,” you said, “he’s my father.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not like you’ve ever met him.”

  “Dustin,” Allie said.

  You seemed unbothered, gave Dustin what I suspected was the first superior smile I’d ever seen on your face. “Um, I have so met him,” you said. “In my dreams.”

  “In your what?” I said, and you turned that same withering smile on me.

  “That’s crazy,” Dustin said. You didn’t respond, put the gourd in your lap, and began to cut your chicken nicely, like I’d always asked you to, like you’d never done.

  “So anyway, if it’s okay with you guys,” said Ross, smelling another opening, “I’m just going to go ahead and tell U Dub. I’m going to withdraw—”

  Bruce shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “But Dad—”

  “Ross, cool it.” He was a nice guy, my brother-in-law—I’d known him since high school, although I often forgot that. I was a senior, Bruce was a junior, and Allie was a sophomore when they began dating. He picked her up for a date once in his father’s Jaguar and his nerdiness was instantly forgiven. He’d placed a rose on the Jaguar’s front seat.

  “Dad, listen, if you would just—”

  “Ross,” Bruce said, warmly, warningly. “I said cool it.”

  The years had worn on Bruce gently enough—he kept himself trim like all Seattle executives did, and although he’d lost most of his hair, he neatly groomed what he had. He wore fancy European glasses and a Rolex, but otherwise (if there could be an otherwise) he dressed plainly. He valued his children, education, reliable cars, medium-risk investments, his boat, local politics, good coffee, early morning runs, and most of all, your aunt Allison. Even now, when he was putting on his Father Knows Best, he still reached out to touch her hand.

  “Is this the same girl who suggested you get a tattoo?” Bruce said.

  Ross was wearing his sleeves rolled down.

  “Maybe we should talk about this later,” Bruce said. “In private.”

  Ross shrugged. You took the power gourd from your lap. “Use it,” you said. “It will help you. It helps your dreams.”

  “Thanks,” Ross said, and smiled at you like he was really grateful.

  And this was where I started crying, which was of course no use to Ross or to you, but people here had become used to my strange bursts and nobody looked at me funny.

  “Anybody up for dessert?” Allie asked.

  “I’ll get it,” Ross said, jumping up. It was possible he could go live a life that nobody expected for him or planned out: he could go to Mumbai, not go to Mumbai, find himself with Asha or another beautiful woman. He could become someone he didn’t yet know how to be. Is that what happened to your cousin, Jake? I must admit, my guess was that he’d end up in Seattle, down the road from his mother. Ross didn’t seem like he had the fortitude to live on his own for too long.

  Do you have that fortitude, Jacob? Will this book give you any fortitude? To go off into your own life?

  “Aunt Karen, you want ice cream?”

  I nodded my head, even though I didn’t.

  We cleared the table, Ross brought out the ice cream, and all of us sat there, eating quietly, and when it started to rain we pretended not to notice.

  JAKE, IT’S BEEN occurring to me, as I write this, that the future you I’m writing for is someone I’m conjuring out of the barest hints. Clues you
don’t even know you’re leaving me. When I imagine the future you, I imagine a quiet young man, since the present you is quiet. I imagine someone who loves the Yankees, loves new toys, is a good and loyal friend.

  But the most insistent part of the future you I imagine are the things about you that remind me of me. The you I imagine came from me and nobody else—that’s the you I think of even now, although I know that makes me seem like a total narcissist. Still, over the past several years, whenever you’ve done something that reminds me of your father (discovered Star Wars, grown taller and more freckled) I’ve thought of it as a quirk, a surprise appearance by a rogue gene. Because the you I see is so essentially me, Jake. The you I know appreciates sarcasm, handles hardship with grace, travels well, is dignified, occasionally pouty, just like me. The you I know needs at least ten hours of sleep. Prefers hot to cold. Sweet to salt. The you I know couldn’t be anyone else, because I am who I am, and you are mine.

  And so as I write for the future you, I am writing for someone who seems a lot like the person I am now. The future you sees the truth about people and is essentially unsurprised. The future you understands that I was your sainted mother but not always such a saint.

  I do enjoy imagining the future you, by the way—the you that I am writing for. You are someone I’m certain I would like very very much, were I going to be around to meet you. I’m pretty sure we’d still be going to movies together, spend Christmas eating Szechuan. At some point you’d get me to finally try rock climbing. I’d introduce you to my favorite books, all of them, the mysteries and the philosophy and the biographies. We’d have the same politics. Your girlfriend would annoy me, but I’d try not to let on. You’d know she annoyed me, but you’d still move in with her and her cat.

  But you’d spend holidays in your old bedroom. You’d invite me over for coffee.

  I guess what I’m saying is, I think you would have liked me too.

  THREE WEEKS AFTER you started kindergarten, I officially entered remission: the end-of-chemo tests confirmed my CA 125 was normal, my CT scans were clear. Sure, there was the weakness in my extremities, the hair loss, the scarring, and let’s not forget the sudden and devastating menopause, but besides all that: remission! Even my doctors sounded jazzed. I danced out of their office at two thirty and realized I was just in time to go collect you from school, so I waved off Julisa and showed up myself at the gates of PS 199, where the crowd of moms and nannies gossiped until dismissal. I didn’t really know any of your classmates’ moms yet; it occurred to me that I should introduce myself. Suddenly I felt like there was time to get to know new people. Remission! The world was once again a little bit mine.