Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  And this was where our line got disconnected. I knew I should call him back, but I didn’t have the energy to beg for the truth. I didn’t have the energy to play this one like the player I used to be. I waited for the phone to ring; it didn’t.

  And honestly, Jake, how lucky for him that Bev was out of the picture, that he was essentially running unopposed, that Jill would never know, and maybe the whole world had conspired to work in Ace’s favor, the inconvenient women either oblivious or dead. The convenient woman winning a trip to France for thirty-two hours of fromage and fucking.

  And Bev dead. Of course, this sort of luck on the part of my candidate never used to bother me.

  If the world found out, Ace would issue a statement or a denial and smear the intern’s credibility, and that would be that. He would be left with only his wife to appease. Surely she’d agree to be appeased. Why did I begrudge him his good luck?

  I clicked again on Bev’s website and found a statement:

  It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Beverly A. Hernandez, mother, grandmother, daughter, wife; dedicated development director of Roosevelt Medical Center for twenty-one years; and candidate for City Council in 2013.

  I took a breath; I was aware of the bandage on my abdomen.

  In lieu of flowers, Beverly’s family asks that donations be made to the O’Malley Breast Health Center at Roosevelt Medical Center. Dates for a public memorial service will soon be announced.

  And I knew it was true. When I’d heard it only from Ace’s mouth, I hadn’t felt the imperative to believe it.

  13

  Even though I told her she was free to go home, Allie insisted on staying. She claimed it was because she wasn’t sure how I’d handle the new medical regimen: a day in the infusion ward every three weeks, nausea in the morning and dizziness the rest of the day, and my hair thinned to the point where I was back on the wig. (Do you remember this Jake? Did you notice?) But actually I think she stayed because it was easier to take care of me than it was for her to go home. Bruce and Ross were at each other’s throats all the time. Camilla had gone ahead and pierced her septum, and Dustin had been keeping a medium-sized collection of garden snakes in the pool house, which scared the shit out of the groundskeeper when he found them. So maybe life in our slightly cramped apartment seemed good to her too.

  In the following days, I started working again, at low levels of intensity and duration. I wrote a moving statement about Bev for Ace to release and told him that in the meantime he was to keep his neck clean. “That’s what I pay you for,” he said, and he was right—in the absence of any real competition, that was all he paid me for. He was in a preposterously good mood all the time now, thanked me for all my terrific work.

  I called Jorge Grubar to leave my condolences. He didn’t call me back.

  I also spent a good part of every afternoon with you, doing all the things we liked doing: the Central Park Zoo and movies and even a schlep one afternoon all the way out to stupid Jones Beach. Thoughts of Bev would float through, and I would remember her warm voice and feel grateful that I’d met her. It felt like an odd bit of luck that I’d gotten there right in time.

  August was turning out to be surpassingly mild, which was a relief, and at night we opened the windows and turned off the air. You had a long list of first grade reading to prepare for, but I also read you some of the books I loved when I was your age, and you were patient with me when I reached for The Phantom Tollbooth and Just So Stories. You and I would read until you were practically asleep, and those were the best parts of my days by far.

  I hope you remember them, Jacob.

  And then, four days before Allie was finally due to depart, your father called. “Hey,” he said.

  I knew who it was, but I acted like I didn’t. “Yes?”

  “It’s Dave,” he said. “Dave Kersey.”

  “Yes,” I said. I allowed the quiet to fester. Late at night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d been working on this book for you, and trying not to reread the parts about Dave, but sometimes I couldn’t help it and it would make me fall apart, the way that you looked when you ran into his arms. I kept rereading those pages. I’d thought about erasing them, they made me feel so raw.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m great,” I said, although actually what I felt was the sudden onset of all that ice. It was two in the afternoon and you and I were planning a trip to Fairway for groceries. Allie was digging around for our reusable bags.

  “No more . . . Nothing bad happening? On the medical front?”

  “Dave, what can I do for you?”

  “I, um—” He cleared his throat. “I’m wondering if you’d like to bring Jacob over for dinner this weekend if you don’t have plans.”

  “I have plans,” I said.

  “Mom! We’re ready!” You and Allie both stood in my bedroom door, each holding colorful grocery bags. Fairway. I had my list.

  “You have plans both nights?” Dave asked. “Megan’s back from Brazil and she’d really like to meet you both.”

  My stomach clutched. Megan.

  “Maybe,” Dave said, “maybe you could do brunch?”

  “Mom! Come on, we’re going!”

  “Is that Jake?” Dave asked.

  I allowed that it was.

  “Can I say hi?”

  “We’re on our way out, Dave.”

  “It’ll just be a minute.”

  “Dave? Is that my dad?” You dropped the bags and rushed to the phone. “Hey! I got to level five on Rabbit Invasion.”

  Noise on Dave’s end.

  “Yeah, I like totally crushed the garden level and then I got to the part where the baby bunnies blow up the farm.”

  Three minutes later, you handed me the phone—even with your father, you weren’t much of a phone person. “Can we go, Mom?”

  “What?”

  “Dave said we were invited to have lunch at his house this weekend. All of us. Can we go? Please?”

  Going through you to get to you. I took the phone back.

  “I’m sorry, Dave, we just don’t have the time this weekend.”

  “Karen, don’t do that.” Allie stood next to you, looking disappointed in me.

  “Allie, we’re really busy,” I said to her, loud enough so your father could hear. “You’re leaving Sunday.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Mom! I want to see him!”

  “Karen?” your father said tentatively on the other end of the phone. “It doesn’t have to be a big thing. I mean, just lunch. We can go out somewhere if you’d be more comfortable at a restaurant. But, you know, we’d love to host. You could see the place.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “It’s different now.”

  I said nothing.

  “You could see where Jake slept when he came over,” he said. “I know you were concerned.”

  “Mo-om!” you wailed from the other side of the couch, and I knew Dave could hear you.

  I sighed, petulant. “What time do you want us and what should we bring?”

  He wanted us at noon on Saturday. That meant Allie would be there, which was a relief: I didn’t know if I could face this without her, even though she had a son who was at war with her husband, a daughter whose septum ring she had to remove. And our father—someone had to take care of our father. But still I wanted my sister with me, only me.

  “Thanks, Karen,” your father said.

  “Stop thanking me,” I said.

  I stomped around Fairway throwing pointless things in our basket: the kind of cereal you’d never eat, the runny sort of cheese I could barely stomach. I still had some hair underneath my wig, so my scalp felt scratchy.

  “Karen?” Allie asked as I plowed my way through the poultry (ground, whole, organic, kosher). “Karen, what are you doing?”

  I didn’t answer her, just barreled around the corner, Allie in pursuit, and loaded up on strange multicolored salsas. You had shuffled awa
y toward the chips and cookies, and I shouted at you—too loudly—to reel you back in.

  “Karen, you’re buying duck legs?”

  I looked down into the cart. I could throw a temper tantrum if I wanted to; it was my prerogative. “Yes,” I said. “I’m buying duck legs. Is there a problem?” There were people all around us, moms with their jumbo packs of juice boxes, single women with their yogurts, food snobs with their galangal and lemongrass. Fairway was like a gigantic hangar where it was easier to find exotic fruits than it was Lean Cuisine. I grabbed you by the sleeve, slammed my cart in the other direction, went back to poultry and threw two more duck legs in the pile.

  “Jesus,” Allie said, and I did not respond.

  At checkout I paid for upward of three hundred dollars worth of crap. “Karen, what are you going to do with all this?” Allie asked gently, and I wondered if she was judging me for poor spending choices or if she was only judging me for my temper tantrum.

  “I’m going to eat it.”

  “Hmmm,” Allie said.

  We needed to take a cab home because of all the bags and that was another ten dollars you would never see. On the other hand, you and Allie gave me the space to calm down by going to the movies without me that night; I spent my quiet time stalking Megan on every available social network before finally falling asleep in my wig.

  TWO MORNINGS LATER I met Ace in the Bronx for breakfast at JJ’s, a diner that sat squarely in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. We would head from there to Beverly Hernandez’s memorial service at St. Boniface, up the road, the Catholic church of the Bronx political and administrative class, to which Ace made a hefty donation once a year in order to keep the priest and staff quiet about his pro-choice stance. I was looking forward to seeing Beverly’s friends and acquaintances and also giving Ace the opportunity to pretend to be a mensch.

  He was already waiting at JJ’s when I got there; this was a surprise because Ace was almost never on time. He looked handsome—nice navy suit, maroon tie, thick hair pomaded back, crooner-style. But I could see him startle when he looked at me, and I knew it was because we hadn’t seen each other in many months.

  “So how you holding up, anyway?” he said, his voice more gentle than it ever was on the phone. He took me by the arm, kissed my cheek. He smelled like leather and pine, a fine gentleman’s cologne.

  “I’m okay, Ace.”

  “That a wig on your head?”

  I touched my hair reflexively, sat down on my end of the booth.

  “I thought you said you were doing all right,” he said.

  “I’m on a new medication. It thins my hair more than usual.”

  He leaned across the table, patted my hand with a sort of fatherly ineptitude. “What are your doctors saying?”

  “They’re saying I’m fine.”

  “Are they really?” He sat back, assessed me critically, the wash of concern lingering on his face. Jesus, how shitty did I look? I’d spent extra time on my makeup this morning, and usually the wig brought a veneer of health to my otherwise spotty complexion. And I was wearing a nice purple dress and my new leather jacket!

  “Ace, you’re giving me a complex.”

  “I just . . . I don’t think I realized . . .”

  “You didn’t realize?”

  The waitress came by and dropped off two coffees. “Anything else you need, Ace? I got your eggs cooking.”

  “You want something?” he asked, gesturing to me with his coffee cup. I had no appetite, but I didn’t want to give Ace the impression I was about to keel over, so I ordered some toast.

  “That’s it?” Ace and the waitress said at the same time.

  “That’s it,” I said, ashamed.

  JJ’s was a very Bronx hybrid of a Greek diner and Dominican gentleman’s club, with feta omelets and a bunch of abuelos in the corner hunched over their cafés con leche, chatting in Spanish. There was 1950s music on the stereo—Dion, Gerry and the Pacemakers—and stout waitresses in faded pink outfits. Ace conducted most of his Bronx business meetings there, since half his constituency ate at least a meal a week in the place and liked to recognize him at his usual table.

  “So,” he said, dumping three minicartons of half-and-half in his coffee, “you guys are still going to send out the direct-mail piece?”

  “Can’t hurt,” I said. “You’ve already paid for it.”

  Ace nodded, smacked a few packets of Sweet’N Lo’s against the side of the table. Then he tucked a napkin into his shirt like he was some kind of trencherman. “You know, part of me is sad I don’t have an opponent anymore. This doesn’t feel like much without any competition. And what a shitty way to die too. A stroke at your desk on a weekend. I mean, come on.”

  “At least she wasn’t in a hospital bed,” I said. “She was living her life.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “She lived until she died.” I didn’t want him to say anything bad about Bev—I wouldn’t let him. The air-conditioning was turned up too high and I felt the chill penetrate my jacket. “Still seeing that college girl?” I asked.

  “Really?” Ace laughed, swirled his spoon in his coffee. “We’re back to that?”

  “I just don’t understand how you could have,” I said. “Especially after all you’ve been through.”

  The waitress circled back with our food and plopped it on the table, then gave her hips a little shimmy as she turned away. Ace looked on appreciatively. “It’s over,” he said softly, his eyes still trailing our waitress. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

  “Such a stupid risk.”

  His expression grew pointed. “Karen, enough. In four years, I’m running for mayor. I’m going to serve the city of New York for four more years as a councilman and then I will be running for mayor. That’s what’s important. I’d like you to stop carrying on about this crap. This is not your job.”

  But he couldn’t bully me. “Of course it’s my job. I’m trying to look out for you.”

  “Look out for my campaign,” he said. “Not my personal life.”

  “You know they’re the same thing,” I said.

  He scowled.

  “Just tell me why,” I said. “If you tell me why, maybe I can help—I can rationalize it. If I need to. If I need to make it go away.”

  “There’s nothing more to say.”

  I found myself buttering my toast in the OCD Chuck style, just to have something to do with my hands. “You love your wife, though, don’t you? I mean—I know it sounds old-fashioned, but—”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “So then why . . .”

  He didn’t respond for a good long while. Then, finally, “life.” He paused again. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Explain it to me,” I said, to see if he could.

  “Young women,” he said, “and I know how this might sound, but I need that energy. That enthusiasm. They give you that. It’s not like with Jill. Jillie is history, my entire life story. But young girls, they make me feel alive.”

  “Why can’t you get energy and enthusiasm from something less scandalous?” I asked. “You’re a New York City councilman. You’re a grandfather!”

  “I’m old,” he sighed.

  “That’s it?”

  “Does there need to be anything else?”

  Christ. “Do you know how lucky you are to get old?” I said, and he looked at me, perplexed for a moment, and then his expression softened into pity. The worst.

  “You never think about it like that,” he said.

  “How did Grubar know?”

  “She was from the neighborhood once upon a time,” he said. “Everybody knows everything up here.”

  “Jesus,” I said, but nothing more. What was the point? If it came out, we would handle it, but it probably wouldn’t come out. We could have sat there arguing about it, but I was afraid we’d be late for Bev’s funeral, which I didn’t want to miss. “Her obituaries were pretty lame,” I said.

&n
bsp; “Whose?”

  “Bev’s,” I said.

  “You read the obituaries?”

  “You didn’t?”

  “What’s there to know? Dominican hospital administrator dies of cancer after half-assed half run for New York City Council. Leaves behind bereaved family. Donations should be made somewhere. I told Amani to make a donation.”

  “Could you try to be more charitable for a second?”

  “I said I made a donation,” he said.

  “We have three and a half months before the election,” I said. “Be a gentleman.”

  “Karen, come on,” he said. “You know me.”

  I knew him. As we made the quick drive over to St. Boniface, I noticed that Ace had become more cautious behind the wheel—when I first met him he caromed around the Bronx thoroughfares like a race car driver, but now he sat closer to the dashboard and kept his hands at ten and two. He was, indeed, getting older. But that didn’t make me feel sorry for him.

  We were late when we pulled up to St. Boniface; already a crowd had gathered in the vestibule and on the stairway leading up to the church.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I said.

  “What are you so anxious for?” he asked me. “It’s just a memorial service.” Still, he relinquished his keys to an attendant, took my arm and led me up the stairs, a chivalrous gesture that was second nature. There was a reporter and photographer from the local paper, the Bronx Times, guys who looked familiar; Ace gave them a big smile as we walked into the nave, the photographer clicking away. He said he’d catch up with them later. “No problem, Ace,” the reporter said, because my candidate was beloved.

  Inside the church, I took a program and a memorial card from a kind-looking lady in an ugly suit. Beverly Annuncia Hernandez, on the cover of the program, over a picture of an angel hugging a cross. Jews don’t go in for this kind of decoration, FYI. No angels, no crosses. No heaven or hell. I hope you know that. I hope Allie sent you to Hebrew school with the money I set aside.

  I sat down next to Ace at a pew toward the middle of the room; he’d been shaking hands as he walked in, dispensed a few hugs. Pancake breakfasts and hospital openings and school graduations and memorial services—they were all opportunities to him, and he was terrific at them all. He was wearing his professional political face and frowning down at the program and the card in his hand, at the angel and the cross and the goopy bio.