Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  Jake, it wasn’t just the Star Wars and the pirate ships and Skull Island. It’s that . . . Honey, you are exactly like him. It’s not only what your face looks like—I’ve always known you resemble him—but your expressions! Your laugh! Your lanky body, your thin shoulders. Your heartbreaking smile.

  I excused myself to hide in the bathroom for a minute and do my breathing exercises, breathe in, count to five, breathe out, count to eight. I wanted to take another codeine, but then I wouldn’t be able to drive your father back to his hotel. I breathed again to five. Maybe I could drink something? I used to keep an airplane-sized bottle of Malibu rum in my purse; maybe it was still there? But my purse was in the hallway. I breathed out, eight. I had my phone, checked my emails, Facebook. Nothing. It was a holiday. I checked the New York Times website, Huffington Post. I called Dr. Susan. Answering machine; it was still a holiday.

  Please, eighteen-year-old Jake: I ask you when you read this to look back at me and the choices I made with a little bit of sympathy. If you’re reading this—I’m trying to picture you now, in your dorm room, maybe there’s music playing, maybe there’s a cool roommate, maybe you’re working on some sort of holographic computer, God knows what the future looks like. If you’re reading this in the year 2025, please think back to what you know of 2013, and how limited we were. We put the most important things we knew on Facebook. We snooped, but we didn’t talk. We assumed, but we didn’t ask.

  I’m so sorry I kept your father from you. I’m so sorry I won’t be able to give you more of him now. But perhaps by the time you’re reading this you won’t care so much. Your father will be just another story. Your family will be a new and different thing, something you’ve chosen for yourself, not this fucked up thing I left you with, an absent father who knew only how to be Santa Claus because that’s all that I allowed him to be.

  HOURS LATER, THE kitchen table looked like the vitrine of a European toy store, an expertly assembled pirate ship pulling in to Skull Island’s harbor, with a castle, a pyramid, and an unexpected veterinarian’s office lurking in the distance. The trip to Anacortes was going to take almost three hours and we should have been in the car already, but I hadn’t found the heart to pull you and Dave away from each other. You worked in silent concentration, snapping Playmobil pieces together, threading twine, hanging small plastic coconuts off plastic palms.

  Neither one of you had even paused for lunch, and usually you were both so hungry.

  I took our bag to the doorway. I made and drank some tea. Eventually I decided to get out my laptop and start working, and the three of us spent another half hour on our projects. Finally, your dad looked at the clock. “Oh man—it’s almost three.”

  You looked up, panicked. “I don’t want to go!”

  “Jakey—”

  “I don’t want to go on a stupid ferry! It takes too long! I want to stay here with him!”

  Dave looked from you to me, saw my expression. “Jake, your mom and you have plans, and I don’t think—”

  “No!” you said, turning red.

  “Dustin’s going to be so disappointed if we don’t get there tonight. And we have to get to the ferry.”

  “I don’t want to go on the stupid ferry! I want to stay here and play!”

  “What if we take some of your new toys?”

  “No!” you said, murderously stabbing some miniature cannonballs into their cannons.

  “Jake, please.”

  You didn’t look up. “Dad?” you said. “Please?”

  What was wrong with me that everything about this whole afternoon seemed like the worst possible surprise? It never occurred to me you’d call him Dad.

  “You should listen to your mom, Jake.”

  You slammed the cannonball down on the table.

  “Honey, why don’t you go play some Wii in the den for a second so I can talk to your father?”

  “But then do we have to?”

  “The Wii,” I said. “Whatever you want to play.”

  You looked suspiciously from me to him, but the siren call of the Wii was irresistible, so after another huffy breath you left Dave and me to the Playmobil landscape and ourselves. I sat down at the table and cradled my head in my hands. My whole body hurt and I hated this stupid Eileen Fisher outfit, I really did. It was the only cashmere I’d ever felt that itched. If I took a codeine, I could make this go away. Maybe on the boat. I could probably take one on the boat. Once we got off the boat, we had to drive only a little way.

  “He’s an incredible kid,” your father said softly. He was sitting next to me, fiddling with a figurine.

  “Most of the time,” I said. “You need a ride back to the Westin?”

  “Will I be able to see him again?” said your father, the man who realized he wanted children six years too late.

  I shrugged. “I have cancer, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, I’m dying.”

  He didn’t respond. Perhaps he thought I was joking? But when I looked at his face he just looked confused.

  “Like I don’t have very long to live.”

  “But—” He looked taken aback. “But I thought you said—”

  “I was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer at the end of 2011,” I said. “I was given four years, more or less,” I said. “Things have been going relatively well, so I’m hoping it’ll be more. There haven’t been any uncontrollable metastases as far as I know. And I had an initial surgery after the diagnosis that removed a lot of the cancer. But remission never lasts forever. It will come back—it’s just a waiting game.”

  “Oh, Karen,” your father said. He looked artless, truly. He did not know what to say. “Karen, I’m so sorry.”

  “After I die, Jacob will move here, to live with my sister and her family. We’ve been spending a lot of time out here so that he can get used to it.”

  “Ah,” he murmured. “Well, I guess that makes sense,” your father said, his eyebrows knitting.

  “So my point is that Jacob is going through a lot right now. Much more than any six-year-old should go through. More than any kid should go through. In a year or two he’s going to get uprooted from everything he knows and move to a different part of the country. Obviously I want this to go as smoothly as it possibly can for him.”

  “Obviously,” your father agreed. He took up again with the figurine.

  “So therefore I’m not that interested in introducing new variables into his life. We’ve set up—I mean, my sister and I have set up a plan that seems like a good plan. We’re going to get him acclimated. We’re treating her family like a natural extension of his family. His cousins are like his brothers and sister. And when I get really sick, we’ll come out here. I’m going to be buried here. This is where Jakey’s going to live.”

  I stopped talking so that I didn’t risk crying. I took off my stupid scarf and folded it in my hands.

  “Can I—” he said. His voice went soft the same way yours did when you wanted something. “Can I help?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “I could—I could do this sometimes. Just, you know, just come play some games or something. I wouldn’t . . . I wouldn’t interfere. I know you have a plan, I don’t want to change your plan.”

  “So then don’t.”

  “But maybe I could just come hang out once in a while?”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said.

  “But what if . . . what if he wanted to?” We both let this hang in the air. I didn’t have the energy to explain to your father that it was bad practice to let a six-year-old get everything he wanted.

  “It just seems like . . .” your father said.

  “Seems like what?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Listen, my treatments are very hard. Jakey has seen me very sick sometimes, and he knows what’s going to happen to me. And I’m the only parent he has.” I shot Dave a look. He was looking at his hands. “And what I want for him is stability.
I want him to have predictability. I can’t just invite new people in to play huge roles in his life. Especially not you. You’re a very fraught figure to him.”

  “I don’t have to be,” he said. “Fraught.”

  “Well, you are,” I said.

  Your dad was quiet for a while.

  “I guess this must be convenient for you.” It just slipped out.

  “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “Well, here you are, right, pushing fifty with this hot little wife and everything’s great except you realized way too late you want a kid because, you know, global warming, and then all of the sudden your biological son gets dropped in your lap.”

  “Karen?”

  I hated how I sounded but I couldn’t stop. “And I’m sure infertility hasn’t been fun, it never is, and maybe it’s even ruining your marriage, I mean maybe that’s why she’s on the road all the time, trying to get away from you and your disappointing barren life together, but now all of the sudden you can call her up and say, ‘Guess what, honey, I found us a kid! He even looks like me!’ And you don’t even have to hate yourself any more for all those years you thought you didn’t want children. Because now you do and presto—you have one!”

  “Karen, stop.”

  “It won’t work that way,” I said. “Jacob is not going to save your marriage.”

  “I didn’t think he would.”

  “Jacob is not going to make you feel better about yourself or your terrible choices or anything like that.”

  He wrinkled his eyebrows. “That’s not fair.”

  “Really? You want to talk about fair?”

  “I want to talk about—” Your father’s brow remained wrinkled, like he was confused. “Karen, he’s my son. You reached out to me—”

  “He’s a little boy. He won’t save you.”

  “Save me?” your father said, after waiting a minute to make sure I was done. “I don’t want Jacob to save me. I don’t want him to do anything at all. I mean, I don’t need him for anything. Or if I do—my marriage is fine, Karen.” He stopped for a second. “I just want to get to know him.”

  “Why?”

  “Even though you kept him from me—look, he is my son.”

  “I kept him?”

  “Karen—”

  “You didn’t want a son!” I might have been hissing.

  “Karen,” he said, “I just want to know him now.” He paused. “See him grow.”

  “I’ve been seeing him grow every day for almost seven years,” I said, and suddenly I was crying into my scarf. Jesus, Jakey, does it seem like I spent most of your life just crying? Believe me when I tell you I am not a crybaby! I never was! The campaigns I lost, the failures I suffered, my mother’s death—I rarely cried, Jacob. Honestly. But now my body is no longer my own. Half my clothing has become useless, torn or slopped upon or shat on or snotted or sweat-stained. I am not myself, I suppose, is what I’m saying. But I was powerful once, I swear.

  “Karen, look . . . I was a different person then. I had different ideas. But I would really like to spend time with him now. And I think . . .”

  We were both silent as I finished snotting into my scarf and took a deep, raspy breath.

  “I think he’d like it too.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I think he’d like to spend time with me too.”

  I would have liked to rail against this except that I couldn’t. It was true. You wanted to spend time with him too. Nobody had ever played with you for three hours so beautifully. I’d never seen you play with anybody like this before. Not even Kyle. Not even Dustin. And even if your father were only playacting here, only putting on his best show to worm his way into our lives—he wasn’t. I knew he wasn’t. The motherfucker fucking loved plastic figurines.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  We sat there and looked at each other. I once loved this man so much I couldn’t eat.

  “Mom?” you called. “Can I do Winter Olympics on the Wii?”

  “We should actually get a move on,” I said.

  “Now?”

  “Five minutes.”

  Dave looked at me. This seemed like the part in the conversation where he should have stood up and we should have all gotten in the car and then waved good-bye—fuck the Westin, I’d drop him off at the Park and Ride to downtown, or he could call a fucking cab, I just wanted to leave this place, get out of there immediately, but he didn’t stand up. He wanted more from me. “Can I call?”

  “Dave,” I said.

  “Please?” he said, and this was like you too, the pleading, the relentlessness.

  “I’ll call you,” I said. “Let me see what Jake makes of this first, okay?”

  The pleading look.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, and finally he stood and wiped his hands on his knees. “I’ve never felt like this before, Karen.”

  “Oh?” I was getting a headache.

  “I just . . . I don’t know if you could imagine this, what it would be like to meet him when he’s already formed. You’ve done such a good job with him.”

  I shrugged. What other kind of job could I have done?

  “I can’t wait to see him again. I hate how much I’ve missed.”

  “Let’s not talk about that, okay? I don’t think I can talk about that right now.” But I would let the record show that he had regrets. “Jake!” I called. “Let’s get going. Your father’s leaving.”

  “Don’t we have to take him back downtown?”

  “Jake, get in here.”

  “I can walk to the bus. There’s probably a bus, right?”

  “I’ll drive you,” I said. “It’s not a problem.”

  So we piled back into the car and drove into Seattle, and then we were going to turn around and get back on I-5 toward Anacortes, which was fine. I mean, the drive was fine. This time I turned on the radio and kept it on. Our bag was in the car and we’d packed up Skull Island. We were definitely going to miss the five o’clock ferry and probably even the six, but the seven would be okay. Holiday traffic had eased. And when we got there, it would still be cocktails.

  “So when can we hang out again?” you asked Dave as we pulled up to the Westin.

  “Let me talk to your mom, okay? And then we can figure it out.”

  “We get home at the end of July,” you said.

  “Your mom and I will figure it out.” Your dad got out of the car, opened your door, ruffled your hair. “Be nice to her, okay? She works hard.” But you’d already burst out of your booster seat and thrown yourself into his arms.

  “Hey,” your father said.

  “I love you, Dad,” you said. It sounded like something you’d always wanted to say, that you’d practiced saying, but maybe it had just burst out of you the way so much burst out of me.

  “Oh, Jake,” he said, “I love you too.”

  And then he buckled you back in, and I sped the fuck out of there, your father standing next to the Westin doorman on the sidewalk, holding out his hand in an extended good-bye.

  7

  You were silent on the ferry, which was fine; so was I. We left the car on the ground floor and took a booth in the upstairs interior cabin by the window to watch the horizon leach out toward China. I was so tired I could barely think. You were reading one of the Jedi Apprentice books Dustin had lent you and pulling french fries, idly, from a McDonald’s bag. Under normal circumstances I never let you get McDonald’s, but on the drive up you were hungry and my defenses were shot.

  “Do you want to talk about him?” I asked, after a long silent while. I’d been reading the Friday Harbor tourist brochures, the words melting on the page.

  You shook your head, ate another fry.

  “You sure?”

  Your eyes flickered upward. Today you had grown older, and the age showed in your posture, your half-annoyed expression. You seemed tired too, and you didn’t like to be interrupted while you
were reading.

  “I’m going to go get some coffee.”

  You nodded at me, went back to your book.

  The ride was placid, not too many kids running around. A couple sitting at a table near us was playing Scrabble on a big magnetic board. Another woman, behind them, listened to headphones while nursing a baby. I stood up to head toward the snack bar in the middle of the cabin, holding on to the backs of other people’s chairs in case the boat swayed. I knew the boat wouldn’t sway, but I held on anyway, tightly. Too tightly. I’d been doing my breathing exercises all afternoon. In, five. Out, eight.

  I was dizzy and my joints felt poorly welded together. I stopped again, breathed; I wasn’t sure I’d make it, and if I did I wasn’t sure I’ll make it back while holding a cup of coffee. I considered whether I could manage the ten paces between me and the coffee. If I made my way through the obstacle course of chairs and booths, I thought I’d be okay, but if I couldn’t, if I went down, I didn’t know what would happen next. You’d be frightened. More frightened, I thought, than if I returned without coffee. That you might not even notice. So maybe I just wouldn’t get the coffee.

  “Are you okay?” A man about my age was gazing at me with concern. I must have looked even worse than I felt.

  “Yes, thank you,” I blurted. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? Can I help you with something?” Oh these fucking Northwesterners. I’d just said I was fine! But then I saw the guy was wearing an official-looking uniform and discerned that it was his job to help me, so I told him I was working off a leg injury and that I would have loved a cup of coffee but I was afraid my legs still weren’t working too well. I might have even said something about a triathlon. He said not to worry and helped me back to my seat, then disappeared to fetch me some coffee, and I felt not even slightly guilty that I lied and was just delighted to have someone serve me, and I wondered if this was what it was like to be old. When I offered him two dollars for the coffee he said, again, not to worry, pointed his thumb at you, said, “Cute kid,” and then made his way off to see to other passengers’ comforts, like a male Florence Nightingale in a Washington State Ferries cap. I loved him. The coffee was good.