Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  “I can figure out something,” she said. “I think I can.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ll be back here in a week or two. Somehow. I’ve been thinking of things I can do to get back here.”

  “Allie, you can’t.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t do.”

  I’d been half-consciously doing my breathing exercises all afternoon and I found myself doing them again now: in through the nose, out through the mouth. I wanted to tell Allie how scared I was for her to go, but I didn’t want to say it like that, I didn’t want to make her feel worse than I’d already made her feel. And also I was the big sister: I was the one who should have been taking care of her. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? How it had always been? When she was little—I’m talking three or four years old—she used to get nightmares, these horrific nightmares. She would sit up screaming in her bed, this blank look on her face, she was still asleep, and I’d smack her to wake her up and then just hold her there while she cried. She would try to tell me what she was dreaming about, but the horrors were so vicious and true she couldn’t even describe them. Usually I’d end up falling asleep with my arms around her. She looked like a little doll, with her blonde hair and her nightgown with the frilly collar. Screaming like someone had plunged a knife in her throat. I’d hold her, put my arms around her. Don’t cry, sissy, I would say—not sissy like a scaredy-cat, but sissy like my sister. Which is what I called her when we were very young.

  Sometimes our grandparents would say, in the morning, that they had heard her screaming, and could she please try harder not to scream? Because it reminded them of their suffering, you know. Of the war.

  “She can’t help it,” I’d say. “Just because you had bad childhoods my sister can still get nightmares.” Then I’d get smacked in the head for being rude.

  “Allie—” I said, but didn’t finish the sentence, cut myself off before I could ask her not to go.

  “Yeah?” She didn’t look up at me. Neither one of us was going to cry, but in order to pull that off we couldn’t look at each other’s faces.

  “You want to eat something?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “Maybe in an hour? Or when Jake eats?”

  “I’ll check on him,” I said, and backed out of the room. She had her head bent in a pile of new shirts; she still wouldn’t look up. She was folding and refolding a T-shirt, artfully.

  My mother and my father and now me. Was it better to be the last woman standing? Or was it easier to go down in the opening round?

  You were dancing around with the Wii in the living room, playing the NHL hockey game, which Dave must have given you. I watched you play for a while, clumsily; the opposing team kept scoring on your underresourced defense. You didn’t seem to mind very much that you were losing. The effects on the game were really good: the cheering crowd sounded like a real cheering crowd, and the play-by-play was being narrated by someone who sounded eerily like a professional sportscaster. I picked up the game’s case. The price sticker was still on it: forty-eight dollars, brand-new.

  After you lost, I clicked off the Wii. “It’s time for dinner,” I said. It was actually past dinnertime—it was already seven—but we’d noshed all afternoon.

  “I’m not hungry,” you said. “I want to play.”

  “First you have to eat.”

  “But I’m not hungry!” you said. You reached for the controller; I held it out of your way.

  “Mo-om! Give me that!” You dove for it, playfully, and I darted out of the way so you couldn’t connect with my ribs, but the darting pulled on my skin and hurt.

  “Jake, you know you can’t jump on me. Enough with the vids—you’ve been playing all day. You want spaghetti?”

  “I said I’m not hungry!”

  “Meatballs? Pizza? Come on. I’ll make you a peanut butter and jelly.”

  “There’s nothing I want to eat!” you said, and you went from whining to anger. “I ate all day!” I used to have these same fights with my mother, I remember, when I was little. All those delicious foods she would offer me: baked chicken with lemon, mashed potatoes, noodles with butter and cheese. All I wanted was to be left alone.

  “Can I make you noodles with butter and cheese?”

  You shot me a look, then plopped backward on the couch.

  “If you don’t eat dinner, you’re going to wake up starving in the middle of the night and it’ll be too late.”

  You gave me another look, still unimpressed, then moved to turn the Wii back on, which you were not allowed to do—only I could, which was one of the rules I insisted on when we bought the Wii. Only I could turn that thing on, and I decided when it was going to be turned off.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I want to play,” you said.

  “You’re done playing. It’s time for dinner.”

  “I’ll eat later.”

  “It will be too late later.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to get up to fix you something at two in the morning, Jacob!”

  You were looking at me with something like calculation in your eyes. Your hand was still on the Wii controller. You mumbled a few words I couldn’t hear.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Megan would.”

  I took a breath. I grabbed the Wii controller from your pudgy little hand.

  “If I were staying at dad’s house and I was hungry in the middle of the night, I bet Megan would make me something to eat. She wouldn’t let me go hungry.”

  I found myself leaning against the wall, pointing the Wii at you. You were standing by the couch, a palm out, as if to accept it.

  “Megan would?”

  “Yes,” you said again, but you looked away.

  “Megan?”

  Now you kept your mouth shut.

  “Megan is not your mother,” I hissed. “She will never be your mother.”

  “I know,” you said.

  “She will never be your mother.”

  “I know,” you said, and suddenly the defiance was gone from your expression.

  “She is not your mother.”

  “Right, mom, I know.”

  “She is NOT YOUR MOTHER. SHE IS NOT YOUR MOTHER. SHE IS NOT YOUR MOTHER.”

  “Mom! I know! I’m sorry, I know!”

  “SHE DID NOT RAISE YOU! I RAISED YOU! I AM YOUR MOTHER! I AM YOUR MOTHER.” Allie burst out of the bedroom. You started to cry.

  “I AM YOUR MOTHER! NOBODY ELSE IS YOUR MOTHER! I RAISED YOU ON MY OWN! I DID THIS ON MY OWN! YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE BECAUSE OF ME! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

  “Karen, stop it—you’re screaming!”

  “DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?”

  “Mommy! Stop it!”

  “DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME? I AM YOUR MOTHER!”

  The room was swimming and my vision was swimming. You were crouched on the sofa, crying, holding a pillow over your head. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  “I AM YOUR MOTHER!” I screamed. I was so flooded with this feeling I didn’t know I could ever feel. “DON’T YOU EVER, EVER—”

  “Karen!” Allie now had her arms around me, as though to hold me back.

  “I AM YOUR MOTHER!”

  “Karen! Stop!”

  “ONLY ME! NOBODY ELSE! YOU WILL NEVER TALK ABOUT MEGAN THAT WAY!”

  “Mommy!” You were hysterical.

  “NOBODY ELSE! I AM YOUR ONLY MOTHER!”

  “Please, Mommy!”

  “NOBODY!”

  I didn’t know who I was. I was standing, rigid, standing over you with the game controller, Allie holding me back. Was I going to hurt you? How could I have hurt you? You? My beautiful boy? And yet I was gripping your arm with my free hand.

  “Mommy, please?” You tried to free yourself from my grasp.

  Allie pulled me away from you, pulle
d me back.

  “I’m sorry,” you choked.

  “Never,” I whispered hoarsely.

  “I’m sorry,” you said again. You were free and hiding now, all of you, on the couch, under the pillows.

  “Jacob, it’s going to be okay. Go to your room,” Allie said. “I need to talk to your mom.”

  “Mommy.” You were shuddering under the pillow. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry, Jacob,” Allie said. “Just go to your room now. I need to talk to your mother.”

  She was still holding me back, but I shook her off. Was I hurting you? Could I have hurt you?

  “Mommy.” You were reaching up from the blanket, pale and teary and snot-spackled. I had never screamed at you in your entire life. My beautiful boy. I had never hurt you. I took you in my arms. I might have hurt you, Jacob.

  I am writing this down now, hours later. I am writing down everything. The truth.

  If Allie hadn’t been there, I might have just ended it all.

  15

  Later that night I had the strongest urge to talk to my father. I knew we wouldn’t have a conversation—it’s not like I expected him to be able to really talk—but there were moments, every so often, when he would wake from his catatonia to respond to questions in grunts or make little noises of his own. I wanted to hear his voice. It seemed to me that night, as the ambulances howled on West Seventy-Fourth Street, and you and Allie slept in another room, and I sat on the couch, listening to the way New York City was never quiet: it seemed to me that I would soon be out of chances.

  It was two in the morning, which meant it was 11:00 p.m. at Bellevue, but that didn’t matter. Time meant nothing to dementia. I dialed the number, was put through. “Is he sleeping, Olga?” I asked.

  “No,” Olga said. She sounded gentle, spoke gently; I felt unworthy of her gentleness. “Would you like to talk to him?” I assented. “Mr. Gil, your daughter is on your phone. Your beautiful daughter Karen, from New York.” I heard a sort of gurgle from the other end. I had picked the right night—a good night to call. “Here, I put you on speaker.”

  “Daddy?” I said.

  There it was, unmistakably, a gurgle. He could hear me.

  “Daddy, I need to tell you something. It’s Karen. Your daughter. Can you understand me, Daddy?”

  Silence on the other end. I wondered if Olga was listening or if she had disappeared into her pile of Us Weeklys.

  Another gurgle, which I took as a cue to go on. “Daddy, I did something terrible tonight. I yelled at Jacob, Daddy. I screamed at him and I almost hurt him. I feel so terrible. I don’t know how I’m going to keep living with myself. I can’t believe what I did.”

  A car alarm started and stopped outside. A drunk girl cackled. Saturday night.

  I wanted him to tell me it was okay. I wanted him to tell me we all make mistakes. I wanted him to tell me you’d forgive me. That you’d still love me in the morning. That he still loved me. That I was still his little girl.

  “And I need to tell you something else. I’m dying, Daddy. Not because I yelled at Jacob. I’m just—I have cancer. I have ovarian cancer. I have another two years, maybe. If I can last that long. The doctors think it might be getting worse.”

  There was nothing. “Do you understand me? I’m dying.”

  I waited for a gurgle, I waited for anything. I thought about you, and how grateful I was that this was something you would never say to me.

  “Daddy, I need you to live, okay? Just—I need you to keep living. For Allison. For your other daughter. She can’t be alone. She is saving me and I need you to save her. Okay? Just hold on. Hold on as long as you can. I’m going to try to live as long as I can, but I need you to do that too. Okay, Daddy?”

  I imagined him there, his stiffened face, staring out into the dark calm waters of Lake Washington. In his striped pajamas. Still a full head of hair. “Daddy?”

  “I think he is hearing you, Miss Karen,” Olga said. “He is blinking his eyes.”

  “Daddy? I need you to live as long as you can.”

  “Oh, he will keep living,” Olga said. “He’s a tough old guy, aren’t you, Mr. Gil?”

  “Daddy, please,” I said.

  Finally, I heard him make a noise. A strangled gargle, a choked-off something.

  “You hear him, Miss Karen?”

  “Daddy?”

  “He is speaking, Miss Karen.”

  “Daddy?”

  We were quiet then, all three of us, and New York City, and the continent between us. Then: Szerelmem. I heard him say it.

  Someone still loved me.

  “I love you too,” I said, and I listened for a little while longer, and the noises began again. I listened to the street, the creaks of the old apartment, the pacing of the neighbor upstairs, the whining of the people downstairs, and out across America, the strained whoosh of an old/young man’s breathing, and the still dark waters of the lake, and the entire rest of the world.

  WHEN IT WAS time to lie down to sleep, I found I still could not. I went into your room. You were on the bottom bunk, Allison on the top. You had an old navy blue rug on the floor—Yankees navy blue—and it hurt to lie down on it, and the pain felt right. I took one of your stuffed animals from the floor, placed it under my head, and imagined it was one hundred thousand years ago, and we were all in a cave somewhere, and it was my job to protect us all from whatever raged outside, and whatever raged inside me. And when that didn’t work, I prayed for my jetpack.

  THREE

  In Another Country

  16

  And suddenly it was the Tuesday after Labor Day. It was time for you to start first grade. First grade! I remembered my own first grade clearly: My teacher’s name was Mrs. Penny. She had red hair and a pretty singing voice and wore colorful macramé vests and I loved her. She was the first person to tell me I was smart.

  It felt good that I could remember first grade, because that meant, in all likelihood, that you’d be able to remember it too, and that maybe you’d even remember today, when you wore your new Sith Lord backpack and your Derek Jeter T-shirt and the light-up sneakers that, after much debate, you decided you preferred to the blue New Balances I favored. In the morning, we got up early, ate eggs and English muffins, and talked about the different things you’d learn at school this year: definitely addition and subtraction but probably also science, and if you wanted, you could take the Spanish-language program after school, which you thought would be too much work but I thought would be terrific preparation for life in the middle part of this century.

  We never really talked about what happened the night before Allie left. I tried to apologize, but then you ended up starting to apologize again, and I told you please not to, that it was my fault, and I felt myself start to cry. Which scared you. But please know, Jake of the future—please know, if you read this, how ashamed I am of what I did. I am keeping this in the record, both what I said to you, and that I’m afraid I’ll never get over it. I want to let you know that I remember it too.

  But we must keep living. And so in order to keep living, after breakfast we fed Kelly and combed out your hair, and I checked your backpack one last time to make sure you had all your supplies. Mrs. Dubrov had emailed a very comprehensive list of things you need, different kinds of pencils, a zip drive. A zip drive! Back in my day it was a glue stick and a pile of folders. But you had your zip drive, your various pencils, and in the front compartment, your power gourd. Because you never know.

  And this was how we would keep living.

  At twenty of eight, we walked down our four flights—you bouncing ahead, me trying not to feel dizzy—and onto Seventy-Fourth Street, where a parade of children in new backpacks and new sneakers bounded toward PS 199. Kyle and his folks were half a block away from us, but you did not run toward them. You held my hand.

  At the corner I had to stop. I pretended to sneeze so you’d think I was stopping so I could sneeze.

  “Mom?” Your cheek
s went pale.

  I fake-wiped my nose with my wrist. “I have a surprise for you,” I said.

  I had meant to keep it till later, when you deserved a treat, but I’d have said anything to get that worried look off your face. Of course now you looked even more worried. “A good surprise?”

  “Yes! A good surprise. I signed you up for tennis lessons. Private. Twice a week.”

  You didn’t smile, but your color did return.

  “This teacher’s the best, I asked around. A bunch of kids from your school go to him.”

  “Like who?”

  “He told me an Emma? I think in second grade?”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “You’ll improve your game really fast with a private teacher,” I said. “Not like in group lessons. It’ll be better.”

  “Cool,” you said. You picked up my hand again, and we rejoined the parade, behind a family of four and an old man walking his dog.

  A few seconds passed. “Do you want to keep playing tennis?”

  “I guess,” you said. “Can I still do soccer too?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Soccer’s only on Sunday afternoons. Tennis is on weekdays.”

  “Cool,” you said again. When did you start using the word cool? There was a pain in my side and I didn’t know what it was about, but I decided to chalk it up to emotion. I was dizzy. My son was growing up. He was in first grade now. I thought he’d like playing tennis. If he didn’t want to do the Spanish program, I guess he didn’t have to.

  When we got to the front door of your school, you dropped my hand like a grenade and raced in. The school was buzzing. All the first graders were running around like they owned the place, while the kindergartners stood back, shyly, their parents looking traumatized, and the second graders, already too cool, moseyed on to their classrooms with their parents ten steps behind. It was a blur of primary colors and cinderblock walls and brightly lettered posters and teachers standing outside their classrooms, smiling, come in, come in. I took a deep breath and walked slowly, geriatrically, following the yellow arrows to Mrs. Dubrov’s classroom. Just under a year ago I’d been in remission. I was not anymore.