Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  Beverly Annuncia Hernandez was born on a beautiful winter’s day in San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic, in 1952 and moved to her beloved Bronx with her mother when she was six. She was the first person in her family to go to college (Hostos Community College and Mount St. Mary) and the first to get a graduate degree (Hunter College in the City of New York). Beverly married her dear husband, Jaime, in 1980, and together they raised three beautiful daughters, Mariana, Catalina, and Rosanna. Anyone who had the pleasure of knowing Beverly knew that her husband, her girls, and her five grandchildren were the loves of her life.

  In 2007, Beverly was struck by breast cancer, which she fought valiantly to remission two years later. Determined to make the most of whatever time she had left, Beverly decided to run for city council to help make her part of the Bronx, and all of New York City, a better place to live. Unfortunately, this terrible disease, against which Beverly waged the battle of her life, was not done with her, and on August 10 Beverly suffered a stroke that ended her life.

  We ask all mourners at this celebration of Beverly Hernandez’s life to consider wearing something pink tomorrow in her honor and to make a donation, no matter how big or small, to the O’Malley Breast Health Center at Roosevelt Hospital. Brave and resourceful physicians at O’Malley are doing everything they can every day to save amazing women like Beverly Hernandez, and we know that with more financial support, and the faith of friends like you, the battle against the disease of cancer will be won.

  (Jake, I just refuse to wear pink. I’m sorry, Bev. I’m sorry, women of the world, breast cancer survivors and unsurvivors alike. I look fucking horrible in pink. I always have.) (Although if memory serves me right, ovarian cancer’s color is teal.)

  I felt sure Bev had been more interesting than these few dim facts of her life: it was all there on YouTube, after all. I made a note to myself to edit my own bio for my own memorial program; I wanted to include a list of my favorite books, for instance. Maybe some of my core political values.

  The service began with an invocation from a priest, and I seemed to be the only one who didn’t know all the words—we did a Christian song and then something that sounded like the AA prayer; I mouthed along. Then, after the priest stepped aside, the friends and co-workers trooped upstage to talk about Bev, again in the most anodyne platitudes. I’d been to enough funerals in my time (my own mother’s, even) to know that a good eulogy is about as rare as a good steak, but still I was a little troubled at the fact that nobody could talk about Beverly without using words like tough, struggle, and loving. I was also dismayed that nobody could talk about her life without talking about her death.

  I was tuning out, refining the list of speakers at my own funeral (Chuck? Would he say anything good?) when Beverly’s daughter Rosanna approached the podium. It was getting hot in the pews, and I’d been sitting too long, watched over by a hundred stained-glass saints. But when Rosanna came to the lectern the whole audience seemed to sit up in their seats, for here she was, one of the daughters, one of the grief-stricken, and so poised (as they say) and so lovely (she was lovely enough), and the people all around me stretched their necks to get a good look at her and her sadness. This had to be her, I thought. The favored daughter.

  She ruffled the papers in front of her.

  “The thing is,” she began, as though she’d been talking to us for hours already, “it’s so hard to eulogize a woman I never thought would die. I never thought my mother would die.” She coughed a little, cleared her throat. She looked to be maybe twenty-six or so. She was slender, with glossy black hair she kept tucked behind her ears. Her face was mottled, as though she’d done more than her share of crying lately.

  “And what I just don’t know is how I’m going to live every day without my mother,” she said. “I don’t know—” Her voice echoed through the packed pews of the church; the other speakers’ words had melted, but hers bounced against the corners of the room.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to get married one day. I don’t know how I’m going to have my own children without her to hold my hand through the pregnancy and all that. For every one of my nieces and nephews, when they were born, my mother was there in the room, telling my sisters you can do this. You just keep breathing. You will do this. And then they brought their babies home, and it was my mom who sat up with them at night when the kids wouldn’t sleep. It was my mom who took over when my sisters needed to nap. It was my mom who taught them how to mash up baby food and what to do when those kids had fevers. My mom was there and I know my sisters would not have been able to do it without her.” I remembered Monica from the video.

  Someone—perhaps her—let out a frightful sob from the front pew.

  “How are you supposed to live without a mother?” she asked. “How am I supposed to live and keep living without her?”

  I hadn’t even noticed the tissues tucked in the pockets behind the pews until people started reaching in and pulling them out.

  “I know . . . I know that I should have been prepared for this. I knew that she was sick and that she was never completely cured. And I know too that people live without their mothers all the time. I grew up with people who never really knew their mothers and people whose mothers left them when they were kids.

  “But not her. My mother was there. No matter what else she had to do that day—and she was a very busy and successful woman—but no matter what else she had to do, my mother was there. She was there for school projects and sports games and graduations. She was there for no reason at all. Just to go out to lunch or something. And when I think about the fact that my mother is no longer here, I don’t feel brave or courageous, like I will be strong because of the lessons she’s taught me. I don’t feel like I’ll know how to go on because of her example. And I’m sorry, Mamá, because I know that’s how you’d want me to feel. You told me that, that I should remember you and feel strength because of your memory.

  “But right now I cannot think of you at all, because when I think of you, all I can think about is how much I miss you, and then I can’t think of anything else.” Rosanna stopped looking down at whatever she’d written, was now gazing upward, toward the painted Jesus above her with a lamb in his arms. “I am so angry that you left us, Mamá. I don’t want to be angry with you, but I can’t help it. I’m so angry. I wish you had fought just a little harder, Mamá. I wish the doctors at O’Malley had done a little more. I know I’m not supposed to say that—that this wasn’t your fault, that you wanted to be here, that you wanted more than anything, but still, you left, Mamá, and now I don’t know who will help me live the rest of my life.”

  No, no, no, I wanted to say. This is not what she wanted. This is not what she prepared you for! She wanted you to be okay. More than anything! That’s all she wanted.

  I felt myself frozen under the petrified gaze of all those saints, and the audience, now equally horrified and moved. And as Ace reached out to (I think) squeeze my hand, I stood up and edged out of my pew, thinking Jake Jake Jake please don’t hate me Jake. I’m so sorry, I can’t help it, I’m fighting as hard as I can.

  “The only thing I can say is that I’ve been cheated and my mother was cheated. We were cheated of even being able to say good-bye to her. We’d practiced saying good-bye to her so many times when she was sick, but then she has a stroke and dies at work. At work! So who does she say good-bye to? Her desk? I don’t know, Mamá. Why did it have to end like this? Why couldn’t you have waited just a little longer? Except I know that even if you waited a little longer I still wouldn’t have known how to say good-bye to you, Mamá.”

  Rosanna would not be okay. I was so hot. I shuffled out of the church, sat down on the steps, and took off my jacket and then my wig and sat there, exposed, while the photographer on the stairs snapped away. I must have made a great mood shot, bald and sobbing.

  “Could you stop that, please?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, but he didn’t stop.

  “I’ll call th
e fucking cops,” I yelled, which felt good. It felt good to yell. I did it again. “Fuck you I’ll call the cops!”

  “Okay, ma’am, okay,” said the photographer, backing off.

  Of course, I now knew why I was so eager to get to Bev’s funeral. It felt like the closest I was going to come to previewing my own, and it was awful. I sat on the steps with my head in my hands. The Avastin’s side effects were manageable most of the time but also irregular, seeming to come and go of their own accord rather than any sort of timetable. I closed my eyes against the sun. The sweat traced patterns down my back, between my breasts. The metal clasp of my bra felt like it was burning me. If Ace fired me, if I had no more work—and why shouldn’t he fire me? Despite my contract, what was really left for me to do anymore? He was right, the race was as good as won.

  I felt a presence next to me: my last candidate. “You holding up?” he asked.

  “Funerals get to me these days.”

  “Understandable,” Ace said, and patted my back, and I turned to look at him, feeling unexpected softness toward the old goat. But instead of looking at me, his eyes were trailing the backsides of two young women walking along the street in front of us in short shorts. Ace made a low noise.

  “Did you just whistle?”

  He moved his hand from my back. “It’s possible,” he said. His eyes remained trained on the teenaged ass parade.

  My mouth felt metallic with rage. “Ace,” I said. “Go back inside.”

  “You’ll be okay?” he said. I didn’t answer, and after a second he was gone.

  Moments later, the reporter and photographer danced back in my line of vision. Kit Rannells from the Bronx Times—I recognized him from last year’s congressionals—scratching feverishly at his notebook.

  “Kit, hey.” He looked up blankly; I put the wig back on my head. “It’s me, Karen Neulander.”

  “Oh hey, Karen. Didn’t recognize you.”

  A weird little shot of adrenaline burst in me like when I leaked those abortion records all those years ago. I still felt the heat of Ace’s lecherous hand on my back, the metallic taste in my mouth.

  “I want you know to know there’s nothing to those rumors,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” Kit was maybe twenty-three or -four, a puppy straight out of J-school. “Rumors?”

  “There’s nothing there,” I said.

  “Okay,” Kit said. He looked confused for a split second, then got a little closer. “Are there specific rumors you’re talking about?”

  “C’mon, Kit,” I said. “Do your own job.”

  He had a reporter’s notebook stuck in his back pocket. “Right,” he said.

  I patted my wig down, put on some lipstick, and made my way back inside the church, leaving Kit to his cell phone and his imagination. When I saw Ace, I waited to feel angry again, or even guilty, but instead all I felt was a sort of righteousness. And then, again, the sorrow.

  14

  Saturday morning the rain came down fierce, woke us all up with its pounding on the windows. I stayed in my bed for as long as I could, listening to Allie get up with you, make you breakfast; I popped a Xanax and lay there while the television went on and a show’s opening theme started and a little while later its closing theme started and then a new show came on. I heard you ask Allie if she thought I was still sleeping. She said that I probably was.

  Finally, after listening to two more rounds of cartoons, I desperately needed to pee. The last of the bandages had been removed the day before and I was left with raw skin and achy bones. I toddled out of my room like a child, nodded at you and Allie, made my way to the bathroom.

  “Mom! It’s almost time to go!” You were still wearing your pajamas, had yogurt around your mouth. You had pulled all the pillows off the couch and had been sitting on them, beanbag style. Allie looked up at me apologetically from her coffee and her Times. She was leaving tomorrow, but I was trying not to think about that.

  “Go where?”

  “Mom! To Dad’s house!”

  “Jake, how can we go,” I asked, “if you’re not even dressed?”

  You looked down at yourself, surprised to find yourself in your pajamas.

  Oh, Jakey. “Give me two seconds,” you said, and bolted into your room.

  “I’ll go pick up the car in a few,” Allie said as I poured myself coffee, took a sniff, poured it out. She’d rented a car to go visit your father, since she didn’t want us to be stuck at the mercy of New Jersey Transit, and there was no way I could ask your father to pick us up or even meet us at the bridge. It was ludicrously expensive for the day, but Allie said she’d cover it. That, plus the tolls—it was going to be almost $150. I felt stupider than I had before about my Fairway spending spree. I pulled a cherry-ginger-flavored Swiss yogurt from the fridge to make amends.

  “You really going to eat that?” Allie asked.

  I nodded bravely, got about half of it down.

  An hour later, we were stuck in moderate traffic on the West Side Highway, heading up to the George Washington Bridge and thence to Englewood Cliffs. At every stop and start, you banged your little frustrated fist against the window. I would have been content to stay in traffic forever. I had decided, after a certain amount of carrying on, to wear the wig, although I was afraid that its lushness made the rest of me look even more fragile. Allie said I was overthinking and that, anyway, they knew I had cancer. I knew they knew, but I didn’t want that to be what they were thinking about.

  “You know they have an iguana, right?” you asked from the backseat.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “Yup. It’s name is Friendly.”

  “Better than a pool house full of snakes,” Allie said, snorting. She merged into the traffic heading toward the bridge, and I felt sad for a second that she didn’t clip anyone and so we had no choice but to keep going. Soon enough there was the bridge, with its skyscraper-sized American flag hanging down from the highest beam (like any good liberal, I found ostentatious displays of American jingoism grotesque), and then we were following my phone’s GPS out toward the low-rises overlooking the Hudson. I found myself sweating, and wasn’t sure if it was the Avastin or the nerves or the rogue cancer cells or maybe just the heat; I turned the air all the way up.

  “Mom, I’m freezing!”

  “I don’t care,” I said. Allie had rented a big old SUV and the air-conditioning was like frost. I wiped my face.

  “You nervous?” Allie asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “You don’t look nervous,” she said.

  “Good.” Then we zoned out onto the Palisades, the thin shelf of cliffs facing the Hudson, across which lay civilization. Off exit 1, we headed south a little, then took a short road through a surprising patch of woods.

  It was exactly as I remembered it. We rounded a circular drive, where a uniformed doorman (who looked familiar but whose name I could not remember) took our keys and said not to worry about parking. He would take care of it. I thanked him. Allie thanked him. I tried not to think, or remember anything, as we marched through the lobby. I tried not to remember anything as we stepped into the elevator.

  “It’s the sixth floor, Mom. The penthouse.”

  Only in New Jersey would the penthouse be on the sixth floor.

  My heart was beating so fast by the time we got to Dave’s door that I honestly wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep moving, but the abject humiliation at the mere idea of passing out kept me strong. I knocked on the door; you pounded it. Allie stood just a little behind me as if to catch me when I fell. She even put her hand on my back for a second to prop me up.

  The door opened. The old apartment. The smell of that old apartment. You’d think that years later, a woman moves in, you get yourself married, you buy new stuff, you install a few rugs, you get a plant, an iguana—you think all that changes and so the smell of your apartment changes too, but no, it didn’t, it smelled just like I’d remembered it—a very distinctive sort of apple air-f
reshener smell, and it hit me hard like it did when I was pregnant with you, in those few weeks before I knew I was pregnant with you. When all the smells were so intense. When I felt your heart fluttering inside me and didn’t even know what I was feeling.

  “Dad!” You rushed past me and into Dave’s arms. He picked you up and flung you around in a circle. How was it that he loved you so much? He’d spent all of two days with you? Wasn’t that right? The day in Seattle, the day when I was in the hospital—and yet the look on his face and the look on yours, and the way he was spinning you around—

  “Wow,” said the woman who had opened the door. I hadn’t even looked at her yet. But there she was. Wifey.

  The ice was back. It was invading every part of me.

  “Those guys really hit it off, huh?” Wifey said, big smile, big teeth. Calista Gingrich hair. “I’m Megan. Come on in.”

  We shook hands all around, me and Allie and Megan, and Dave and Allie, and Dave semihugged me and I semihugged him back, even though being there in that fake-apple-scented apartment almost destroyed my ability to hug or move or do anything at all. I could barely speak. I thought for a second I would choke. And then I thought to myself: Karen, Jesus Christ, grow up.

  But at least (and despite the smell) the apartment looked completely different; an expensive-looking Indian rug was on the floor, and the black leather couches had been traded in for some hip-looking midcentury versions, and there was a Noguchi coffee table and an Eames lounge chair and eccentric lamps. The open kitchen had been remodeled too, and furnished with all sorts of expensive looking appliances. Webbed leather barstools lined up against a granite island. The dining table looked like it had come straight from a farmhouse, although surely it came from a pricey design store, and on it was laid an assortment of goodies and an ice bucket stocked with two bottles of champagne.