Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  “I am just asking,” your father said, “to be part of his life.”

  “You can’t take him from me,” I said.

  “I’m not talking about taking him,” your dad said. “I’m talking about knowing him.”

  “You don’t even know what movies he’s allowed to watch.”

  “So I’ll learn.”

  “You’re too stupid to learn.”

  “Jesus, it’s no wonder you stayed single.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He paused. “You cannot keep me from him,” he said. “You just can’t.”

  I wiped my eye again. I thought about losing you, how I had once lost your bastard of a father.

  No bus. No taxis anymore either.

  “Dave, I’m dying. Okay? I’m dying. What else do you want from me?”

  “I want you to say that I can see him.”

  I had a vision then of you squeezed in between him and Megan, the Megan I knew from Facebook, pert little blonde, on some holiday card, a Christmas card, they would never raise you Jewish, those fucking papists, and I knew that I was crying there on the sidewalk next to the grimy bus shelter. I was crying in front of your father, who was winning or who had already won.

  “I have cancer, Dave.”

  “I know,” he said. And nothing else. At the hydrant, a dog stopped to pee. I looked down Seventy-Second.

  “I’m not talking about taking him,” Dave said. “I just want to get to know him. Please.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “There are too many reasons to count,” I said.

  Dave shook his head, blew out through puffed cheeks, but if he was going to say something, he thought the better of it.

  “My bus is here.”

  “Do you need company?” he asked. “At the doctor’s? I’ll go with you.”

  Did he want to meet Steiner to find out just how quickly I’d be out of the picture? “I’m fine, thanks. Give me the bag and I’ll bring it home.”

  He looked down at his Trojan horse of a shopping bag, his little pretext full of your clothes. I took it from him as the bus pulled up. The bus would make me late, but it didn’t really matter; Steiner always made me wait at least twenty minutes.

  “Thanks for dropping it off,” I said.

  “I’ll call you,” he said.

  “Sure you will,” I said, as though he’d called me all those years ago, as though he’d been waiting to call me ever since. I watched him standing there as the bus pulled away, keeping his eyes on mine, a poor facsimile of a big romantic scene.

  BUSES RAN A little faster in the summer since the streets were a little emptier, and I made it to Steiner’s office right on time. I’d managed to pull myself together on the bus and was finally wearing lipstick by the time I checked in with the receptionist. To my surprise, Steiner was ready for me. Because I was in a scared mood I took this as a scary sign.

  “Are you okay, Karen?” Steiner asked. His tie was decorated with tiny hot-air balloons. “You seem distressed.”

  “I’m fine.” I was sick of being in other people’s offices surrounded by other people’s diplomas; I missed my own.

  “Listen, don’t look so scared.”

  “I look scared?”

  Steiner nodded. He wanted to confirm some numbers, have his nurses take some more blood, which was curious since I had just been in surgery and surely could have donated all the blood the labs would ever need while I was under, but no, that wasn’t the way it went, my veins had to be being strip-mined like a West Virginia coal deposit. “Are you rethinking my prognosis, Dr. Steiner?”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Because of what you said on the phone.”

  Steiner picked up a sheaf of papers, dropped them on his desk. Shuffled through them. Avoiding my gaze. “There are some cancer cells recurring on your intestine,” he said. “Surgery isn’t really an option for this, so we’re going to start you with Avastin and Taxol infusions.”

  “Am I still in remission?”

  “Technically, no,” he said. He looked apologetic. “But we’ll get you back there soon. I promise.”

  My heart was pounding like a series of gunshots. “I’m not in remission.”

  “Karen, I told you that was a possibility.”

  “You did? When did you say that?” Jesus, I was so sick of men telling me they’d already told me things they’d never told me.

  He flipped through his papers again. “There was always a possibility this would happen. But this new drug will help stave off growth.”

  I’d loved remission. I’d been so proud of my remission.

  “We’ll need to get you scheduled for an infusion next week,” Steiner said.

  I stared glumly at his stupid hot-air balloons. I could have just let that bus run me over.

  “Karen, have you been seeing Susan Reed? Has she been helpful?”

  Dr. Susan. “She’s in Martha’s Vineyard for the summer.”

  “I’m sure she’ll take your calls.”

  “I haven’t felt like calling,” I said.

  Steiner sighed. “You working? Are you able to work?”

  “I hate my candidate,” I said.

  “We’ll go after these rogue cells,” Steiner said. “We’ll get you back into remission. In the meantime, try to focus on the positive. Really, it helps. Studies prove it.”

  “You need studies to prove that being positive is helpful?”

  Steiner patted me on the back as he ushered me out toward the examining room for the nurses to draw my blood. “I thought you’d feel better if I put it like that.”

  WHEN I WAS thirty-five, long before my diagnosis or even my bloated belly, I woke up one day to see that I was old. I felt as shocked as Gregor Samsa must have been the day he woke up a bug. Gray hairs had appeared along my temples overnight; my hands were suddenly lumpy with veins. My back twinged when I stood up too quickly. What was shocking about this, in retrospect, was that various women’s magazines had led me to believe that I wouldn’t start aging until I was at least forty-seven. You can imagine my surprise.

  I was unmarried, even though I’d always assumed I’d get married before I was old; I had no children and it seemed possible to me that I might never have children. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d always thought I’d have more time, and then suddenly, when I was thirty-five, I realized that I didn’t have more time. Does this seem silly to you? Perhaps you’ve grown up in a more rational generation; perhaps American life expectancy has started to decline after years of increased longevity—what I mean is that perhaps, for you, youth isn’t as protracted as it was for me, for people born in the 1970s. I hope that’s the case and that when you’re thirty-five you don’t think you’re still kind of closing down your twenties.

  “Well sure,” Chuck said to me when I confessed to him that I was old and that I was only going to get older. “If you were living during the twelfth century you’d be considered ancient if you weren’t already dead. Age is a construct. Feel however you want to feel.” I’d noted that Chuck, like a lot of men from wealthy families, seemed to get only more handsome as he got older.

  “I feel decrepit,” I said.

  “You look the same,” Chuck said. “Maybe get a haircut?”

  I got a haircut, but the depression continued and deepened; Chuck recommended a therapist he liked, but she didn’t take insurance so instead I did what I’d always done: I turned to books. From the Barnes & Noble in Chelsea, back when there was a Barnes & Noble in Chelsea, I stocked up on things I’d always meant to read: Les Misérables, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Band of Brothers. Fiction and nonfictional war, suffering greater than my own. Stuff my dad had liked. It usually did the trick. When I’d been depressed right after college, I’d found great comfort in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

  But the books didn’t enliven me the way I’d hoped, and neither did the purchase of several new pairs of shoes, and frankly I’m
not sure even having you did it, since I was geriatric primigravida and subjected to about nine million genetic tests. (In the end, you know what did it? Cancer. Forty-one is like a child when it comes to ovarian cancer. Everyone choruses, all the time: but you’re so young!)

  Anyway, I mention this now because I’ve been thinking about you and your youth, and even my own relative youth; we are young until we decide to be old. We are alive until we decide to be dead. The pile of books that I bought during that bout of depression almost a decade ago is still here. They’re all good, if ponderous, and if you’re going to read any of them (you should probably read all of them), I’d like to recommend Eichmann in Jerusalem. This is not only so that you can feel a connection to certain historical events, but also because it’s a curious meditation on a time—the 1960s—and place—Israel—and because Arendt is very smart about death and dying. She quotes a German who says that the reason more Germans weren’t willing to help Jews was because they knew that if they were caught, they would die anonymous deaths. They’d just be taken out and shot somewhere and buried in a pit with all the other traitors to the Nazi cause. And to the German, an anonymous, pit-of-corpses death was even worse than dying itself.

  I kind of understand that German guy: to a certain way of thinking, even death isn’t so bad if it means people will really make a whole deal out of you. Sometimes that’s what I think about: that I will die with the comfort of knowing I’ll be memorialized. After my funeral, there will be a catered luncheon at the Columbia Club, courtesy of Bruce’s membership and seat on that university’s board. If you don’t want to go, I told your cousins, they should take you anywhere you want. Yankees games, pizza, anything.

  I’m going to pack these books up and add them to the crates we’ll take to Seattle. When I unpack your bookshelves I’ll add these to the top, and tell Allie that they’re there, and that you should read them when you’re ready to. Not when you’re depressed, necessarily. Just when you feel like remembering.

  “YOU LEFT ALL this stuff at Dave’s house,” I said when you came home from Chelsea Piers, showing you the bag.

  “I was going to leave it there,” you said. “For when I go back.”

  I waited for a moment to see if I felt stabbed, but for some reason I didn’t.

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said.

  You nodded. Of course it made sense. He was your father and you were certain you’d be seeing him again. I kissed you on the forehead. The next day I headed off to my first Avastin infusion with Adolf Eichmann in my arms.

  AS STEINER PROMISED, the side effects really weren’t so awful, and after a few days of pukiness, I started to feel like my old disgusting self again. At ten o’clock on Sunday, I declared that I was ready for (gentle, geriatric) action, and then we kind of lazed around the apartment, deciding what to do. My instinct was to lie in bed and wait to barf, but that didn’t seem like the most productive way to spend a warm weekend morning in New York.

  “We could go to Jones Beach,” Allie said. “Remember how we did that as kids?”

  “You hated Jones Beach,” I protested, so I didn’t have to admit I had no energy. “Those gross changing rooms? The jellyfish?”

  “The Times says it’s nicer now.”

  “I could go to the beach,” you said. “Or Coney Island.” Oh my God, no, I couldn’t face Coney Island—the rides? The hot dogs?

  “I’ve never been to Coney Island!” Allie said, clapping her hands. “Oh totally, let’s do it.”

  “It’s like hours away on the train,” I said.

  “One hour,” you said. “I went with Kyle.”

  “You hate being on the train for a whole hour.”

  “No I don’t.”

  I escaped this one when the phone rang. Ace. Finally. I took the phone into my bedroom.

  “You’re a hard man to get a hold of,” I said, sounding peevish despite myself. “I spoke to someone on the Hernandez campaign who’s been spreading rumors about you.”

  “Beverly’s dead,” Ace said.

  I half-sat, half-collapsed down on the bed.

  “I just found out,” Ace said.

  “When?”

  “Just now. You’re the first person I called.”

  “But I just saw her.”

  “You saw her?”

  “For the campaign,” I said. “Two days ago. What happened?”

  “Stroke,” he said. “Not much need for a campaign now, huh? They’re not going to find someone to take her place for an election that’s in—what, four months? I guess I’m running unopposed.” Christ, in his mind he was already installing his furniture in the mayor’s office. Meanwhile, I was tingling all over. Bev. Who lived until she died. Three children and five grandchildren that all looked like her. Her office, her own secretary. Illiterate father and look at me now.

  Bev was cancer-free. Paul Tsongas was cancer-free.

  “Do you know anything else?”

  “Just that she died at work a few hours ago. In her office on a Sunday, the poor broad. A guy I know at Roosevelt told me. I don’t think it’s public yet.”

  My laptop was on the bed; I flipped it open and went to Bev’s website, but there was nothing there, nor on her Facebook page. Nothing on the Roosevelt Medical Center site.

  “Are you sure?” I thought of her crowded little office, the photographs.

  “Positive.”

  “Stroke?”

  “Evidently it’s some kind of complication from the medication she was on. That’s what my friend said. But I don’t know, what do I know? I’m not a doctor.”

  “She was healthy,” I said. “She said she was healthy.”

  I could practically hear Ace shrug.

  “Where are you now?”

  “In a car on my way from City Hall,” he said. “I’ve got a meeting tonight, then dinner with a few of the guys from the precinct. Photo op, not that I’ll need it, I guess.”

  “We’ll need to put out a statement.”

  “Get something to Amani.”

  “I will,” I said, then let the conversation sag. I could hear sirens passing Ace’s car on the highway.

  Beverly. She’d touched my hand and told me it would be okay.

  “Anything else?” Ace asked.

  It was beside the point of course, but I still wanted to know. I didn’t hear any gloating or satisfaction in his voice—he wasn’t cruel enough to wish his competition dead. But he sounded nonchalant, undisturbed. A good woman in her fifties dead of a stroke and he was in a car on the West Side Highway and his life would go on undisturbed, unchanged.

  “Ace—”

  “I’ll still pay you your fees,” he said. “You’ll still be the head of my campaign.”

  “Ace,” I said, flushing—I didn’t want to talk about money, but also of course he was going to pay me my fucking fees; it was in the contract—“Ace, you didn’t do something indiscreet in France, did you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I spoke to someone on the Hernandez campaign—”

  “There is no more Hernandez campaign.”

  “Who said that you . . .” I couldn’t even get the words out, which was surprising. In the past I’d been much better about confronting my clients. “Who said that you flew one of your interns to France after Jill left. A female intern.”

  Ace paused.

  “Ace, that’s true?”

  “Girl had never been to Europe before. Had hardly left New York State. I gave her a history lesson. You know, Karen, once upon a time I used to teach American history.”

  “You brought one of your staffers to France to teach her a lesson in American history?” That cocksucker. But although I tried to muster some indignation, all I really felt was heartbreak. Bev, poor decent Bev. She called it like she saw it: Ace was a son of a bitch. I wondered where her memorial service would be. Would they do something at Roosevelt Medical? The grandkids, her young grandkids. The one from the video. Her husband with the mustache, the da
ughter she was so worried about.

  “Listen, Karen, I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing more to say about it. It was perfectly innocent.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Ace.” But even I could hear the resignation in my voice. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

  “She was there for a day and a half on her way to meet friends in England.”

  “France isn’t on the way to England.”

  “It can be.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “You don’t need to know it.”

  “If Jorge Grubar knows it, I need to know it.”

  “Who’s Jorge Grubar?”

  “He manages the Hernandez campaign.”

  “There is no more Hernandez campaign.”

  I was so tired. “Jorge called me to report that an intern of yours went to France to meet with you after Jill left. Ace, if Jorge Grubar knows, don’t you think that Jill will find out?”

  “There’s nothing for Jill to know.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You keep my wife out of this, Karen. There is nothing for her to know.”

  “How could you do this to her, Ace? Again?”

  “Listen, if I tell you it was innocent, it was innocent.” His voice turned hard. He paused again, then attempted to sound jocular. “What does it say about me that my own campaign manager finds me so hard to trust?”

  I lay back on my bed; I was melting with exhaustion. I didn’t trust Ace because he was one of the least trustworthy people I’d ever met, and he was lying to me, the only person he really wasn’t supposed to lie to. But Bev was gone, and soon enough I’d be gone too, so I guess he thought he could.

  “Ace, if this comes out, it’ll be very bad.”

  “There’s nothing to come out, Karen. Honestly. You don’t have to sound so concerned.”

  “I’m not concerned,” I said. “I’m furious.” Although what I really was, was grief-stricken.

  “This is nothing,” he said. “And if it were something, it would be your job to make it go away.”

  “Is there something I need to make go away?” Silence. “Ace?”