Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  “Jill, come on.”

  “As though I’d forgiven him. As though I supported him! And the whole time when I wanted to kill him.” Did she? I remembered her as very compliant, very cordial. I remembered being impressed.

  “I know, look—”

  “And if he’s done it again—how could he do that to our family? We have two daughters! Ruth is engaged to be married. What, are we not going to walk her down the aisle together? Are we not going to stand together with our daughter when she gets married? Are we going to act like marriage doesn’t even matter?”

  “Jill, come on . . .” I considered offering her a codeine. Maybe a Xanax. “Do you want a Xanax?”

  “I already took two,” she said. She looked up sharply. Ace was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “Jillie, come on,” he said.

  She turned rigid, shot daggers through him. “I’m going out,” she said.

  “Where you gonna go?”

  “I can’t be here right now.” Then she stood, brushed past him, a cloud of rage in her wake. Somewhere in the house the terrier yapped. Ace wore jeans, a white V-neck T-shirt, as casual as I’d ever seen him. Bags under his eyes. His hair was still perfect, though. After a minute or so, he sat down at the table with me. We were quiet. In another minute, we heard the garage door open, Jill’s car pull out.

  “Jesus,” I said, but without her in the room, I felt better.

  “I know.” He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his mouth. He didn’t look tormented, exactly, but he looked wary. “I just don’t know . . . I don’t know how I wasn’t . . .”

  I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. “How you weren’t what?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” he said.

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “Can I get you anything?” Ace asked me. “Coffee? Anything?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, but Ace stood and poured two coffees, then pulled some bourbon out of a cabinet and added a slug to one of the mugs and then, after a pause, the other. With all the drugs I was on I couldn’t drink bourbon, but I did like the smell.

  Ace’s kitchen was nice: skylights, a big Wolf range. From what he’d told me, Jill was a really good cook. He’d always been proud of her cooking. They hosted Thanksgiving dinners for half the Bronx, and she’d welcomed dozens of New York City dignitaries to their dining room: Bloomberg, Koch, Cuomo. Lots of Italian stuff, lots of baking.

  Ace sat down, pushed a mug at me.

  “So what now?” I asked him.

  “You know I was a history teacher a million years ago. You know that, right?”

  “I do,” I said. Birds chirping outside. You’d never have known you were in the Bronx.

  “Right after college, after Vietnam, I get educated on the GI bill, first one in my family, the whole thing. Meet Jillie freshman year, first day of classes. Somehow get up the nerve to ask her out. Somehow get up the nerve to ask her to marry me. Me! An idiot from the Bronx, and here’s this beautiful girl from Manhattan, and I get her to agree to marry me.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. Did he want me tell him he wasn’t an idiot?

  “I get an education degree from New York University, start teaching in Westchester. American history. Revolution through the Depression, every year. And every year I talk about the same people making the mistakes, King George III underestimating the American colonists, Calvin Coolidge underestimating the financial crisis. Woodrow Wilson. Treaty of Versailles. Same mistakes, again and again. Not even hearing myself. Meanwhile, Jillie’s raising the girls, keeping up the house, and then her father dies and she gets all this money and what does she want to spend it on? A nice house for our girls. Good schools for our girls. Jill never does anything for herself. She wants a nice kitchen, we get a nice kitchen. So she can feed us, that’s why she wants a nice kitchen. So she can cook for her family.”

  “Okay.” I was certain he wasn’t half the history teacher my father had been.

  “Ach,” Ace said. He drank from his mug, a little too much. “So then I decide I want more than that, just being a history teacher, so I go into politics. I’m an assemblyman, I’m Bronx borough president. Then I’m a city councilman. And the whole time I’m just taking for granted that it’s all about me, about what I want, and that what I want will be good for my constituents, good for my family. Good for my wife. How could it not be? It’s what I want. And I’m a good guy, so the things I want must be good. Right? I mean, I would certainly never hurt anybody. I would never take bribes, anything like that. I’d never be corrupt. I do the right things by the people who elected me to office. I do right by my family and right for the Bronx.”

  “You’ve always done right, Ace.”

  “Not always, Karen.”

  I looked at the table.

  “Sometimes at night—that time when you’re supposed to be most honest with yourself, it’s just you and your God—I knew I wasn’t doing right. And I did it anyway.”

  I didn’t really know how to answer that. I sniffed my coffee, resisted taking a sip.

  “And then, that one time I got caught, I got saved—you saved me, Karen—and I started to think I was invincible. If I weren’t invincible, why was I still alive? I learned nothing. I was a good boy for a couple of years, but then I couldn’t help it, I did this stupid shit again. And I still thought I was going to survive it because nothing really bad had ever happened to me, and even when it had . . . it really hadn’t.”

  “These things happen,” I said, witlessly.

  “I’ve gotten away with shit I never should have gotten away with.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “My life isn’t just about me, Karen. Just because I don’t get hurt doesn’t mean nobody else in my life is hurting.”

  I sighed, sniffed my coffee.

  “I’m fifty-nine years old. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure that out.”

  I took a sip of the coffee and immediately the bourbon hit my brain, made me blink hard.

  “I’m dropping out of the race, Karen.”

  It took me a moment to hear him. “You’re what?”

  “I can’t do it to Jill. I can’t make her go through this again. I love my wife, Karen.”

  “Ace, they’re never going to find out!”

  “They’ll find out,” Ace said. “They always find out in the end.”

  Jesus Christ. “Ace, all you’ve talked about since I met you is running for mayor one day.” I felt slurry and deranged, and I didn’t know if it was from the bourbon plus the codeine or just from what Ace was telling me. “Don’t let a sudden bout of morals change your entire life goals.”

  “It’s just what’s right.”

  For fuck’s sake. Didn’t he know this was my last campaign? I was flailing, panicking: How could I be myself without a job?

  “I’ve put her through enough,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t be such a melodramatic baby. These are just some stupid rumors in the Bronx Times. They’re bullshit!” I hoped my voice was as clear as I wanted it to be. “You don’t have to throw yourself on the sword just because of a dumb mistake.”

  “It’s more than just a dumb mistake.”

  My poor heart started pounding, thrumming against the bourbon, the codeine, all those depressants. As sorry as I felt for Jill, I feel even sorrier for myself. “What about your responsibility to your constituents?” I asked. “To the people who elected you?”

  “They’ll elect someone else. Or they won’t. What do we get, thirty percent voter participation up here?”

  “Ace”—I could hear it, I was slurring—“Ace, I strongly encourage you to reconsider your position. You have no opponent. You’re running unopposed. Even if Rannells somehow manages to expose—”

  “I made up my mind. Last night, I’m sleeping on the couch—it’s four a.m., I can’t sleep. You know what that feels like?”

  Of course I knew what that felt like.

  “And that’s when it was time for me to
finally be honest with myself. If I couldn’t be honest with anyone else, then I could at least be honest with myself. I tiptoed upstairs, I peeked in on Jill—she was fast asleep, tissues piled up around her, she’d been crying. And I swear to God I saw the same beautiful woman I married thirty-five years ago. Like not a day had passed. And I thought to myself, how could I do this to her? How could I keep doing what I need, what I want, instead of what she deserves? This is my wife, you know? This is the woman who keeps me alive.”

  Last night, I kissed you on the forehead in your bunk bed while you slept. Your beautiful long lashes. The sheets clutched in your fingers.

  “I know.”

  All Ace ever wanted was to be mayor, and all I ever wanted—well, most of what I wanted—was to be a good mother to you.

  I excused myself, went to the bathroom. I looked shot. No more campaign. No more work. I splashed water on my face, took a deep breath in, a deep breath out. And slowly my heart relaxed into its usual pace.

  You see, Jacob, it’s just that I’d been working since I was in high school. At the dry cleaner’s next door to our house. At the Binghamton cafeteria during the lunchtime rush. At Harley Political for five long years. At my own shop every year since. And just like that, my work was gone, leaving me with nothing but myself.

  But also leaving me with you. Without Ace, I would have the time I needed to have with you.

  I had given myself the gift of time with you without even realizing what I was doing.

  My face was dripping. I toweled off, headed back to the kitchen table, sat down next to Ace. For a long time we didn’t bother saying anything. What was left? After a while, Ace stood, poured the remains of our coffee down the drain, riffled through a drawer, and took out a checkbook. After he wrote me a large check from his business account, I took my leave.

  My candidate, my crisis, my job, my life. The check in my purse. I wasn’t really thinking about any of that. I was just thinking about you, your life, this life I had given you that was yours.

  AFTER DINNER, AND a full report on your first day of school (you learned a song about seasons and your library was called the “media center”), you told me why you looked a little bit sad about your surprise this morning. “It’s not that I don’t want to take tennis lessons,” you said. “It’s just that I thought you were going to tell me that I could see my dad.”

  17

  Daylight saving ended early this year, and you played tennis in the gloaming under the court’s huge white lights. Topher, your teacher, was going easy on you, or else you were even better than you were the week before; your serves cleared the net by inches, and you were working on a bit of a backhand. And fast! You could skip across the court in the time it took me to turn my head. Watching you play was like watching you become someone else. It was a surprise.

  For some reason, I was finding it harder to regulate my body heat; my hands were always freezing now and so were my toes. I was wrapped in a fleece sweatshirt and a down jacket and an ugly wool afghan even though it was fifty-seven degrees out and you were, at your insistence, wearing nothing but shorts and a flimsy short-sleeve T-shirt. And your sweatband, of course. I had a seat on the bleachers right by the court. I was watching every muscle in your body all at once. I knew your father was coming, but I wasn’t on high alert or anything. I barely even startled when I saw him approach.

  “Hey,” he said gently. He sat next to me on the bleachers; I slid over but not enough and our bodies touched a little. I wasn’t wearing a wig, only a thick wool cap tight over my head. My eyebrows were sparse but I hadn’t drawn them in. I did put on some lip balm, though, the shimmery kind. Mostly because I liked the way it tasted.

  I could feel your father’s strong familiar body next to me, his pressure. The smell of him, or just the smell of the leaves. I’d met him in the fall. That night we met, when we spent hours together at a fund-raiser in Maryland—that’s how he’d smelled. That night we left the stupid hotel ballroom, walked along the weird man-made lake next to the hotel. Like we were in Paris together. Like we were somewhere really good. He loved me once, your father. I believe he did.

  “Wow,” he said as you returned one of Topher’s driving serves.

  “I know,” I said. You took a dramatic little dive, rolled over once, popped right back up with your racket in your hands, tossing it back and forth. You were bending your knees, your tongue sticking out just a little.

  “Is it just me or—”

  “No,” I said. “He really is good.”

  We watched you again for a few minutes. I didn’t think you knew he was here; if you did, you wouldn’t have been able to concentrate.

  “So what’s going on?” your father finally asked.

  “Parent-teacher conferences are the week before Thanksgiving,” I said.

  He looked at me, confused.

  “Jake’s doing pretty well in math, but his handwriting is still terrible. Lots of boys his age have problems with small motor skills, so it’s not really a big deal, but the teacher thought I might want to do some occupational therapy with him. Just, like, having him pick up small objects and stuff. Jacks. Marbles. Clearly his gross motor skills are fine.”

  “Kids still play with jacks?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Okay,” your father said. We were quiet again for a while. Crows landed on a nearby tree. On the court, you were racing and grunting.

  “Also I’m thinking about putting him in the accelerated Spanish program. He knows a little bit from Julisa, just some basic conversation, but he can’t read or spell or anything. But there’s an option if he wants to—it’s like an extra hour after school. Between that and the tennis it might be too much, but on the other hand the research shows it’s very helpful for children to be bilingual.”

  “Okay,” your dad said again.

  “I’ve talked about it with him and he says he doesn’t think he wants to, but I’m not sure . . . I mean, I don’t really know how many of these decisions should be left up to him.”

  “What does his teacher think?”

  “That’s what I want to ask her at the conference.”

  You paused for water but didn’t look over at us on the bleachers. If you saw him sitting there, would you have recognized him right away?

  Now Topher turned on the ball machine, stood behind you, working out some kinks in your stance that I never would have seen. Standing next to Topher you seemed so delicate, almost fragile; on your own you seemed so big to me. Six-year-olds are such funny people, so aware and capable that it’s easy to forget that really they’re still small and new on this earth. You adjusted your stance and whacked the next ball hard.

  “I think you should come to the meeting if you want to.”

  Your father looked at me. “Of course I want to,” he said. We watched you for another minute. “Why? I mean, why do you want me there?”

  “I think we’re at a point where Jake needs more people in his life,” I said. “Not fewer.”

  He was still looking at me, and he looked—honestly, he looked sad. He didn’t look rapacious. He didn’t look litigious. I had to be honest with myself, and with you. “Has something changed?”

  “I’m unemployed,” I said. “My candidate dropped out.”

  “I read that in the Times,” he said. “What about your health?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My doctors are pretty insistent about staying positive, but I’m not feeling very good these days. And anyway—that’s not really why. He loves you, Dave. He loves you. I have to do this for him.”

  Dave closed his eyes, put his fingertips on his lids.

  “I want you to know it kills me.”

  “I know,” he said, eyes still closed.

  “Do you?” I asked. I was watching you while I spoke; I could not turn my head. “Do you know what it feels like to let you play with him, to let you see him? You didn’t want me, but you still get him?” I tried to say this conversationally, but I was failing.
/>   “Karen,” he said.

  “I loved you so much. I loved you. You broke my heart. You told me you didn’t want this child we had made. You told me that and then you let me walk out your door. And you had said you loved me. And then we made a child together and you told me to leave.”

  I was no longer being conversational. In fact, I was once again crying. I was desperate for you not to turn around and see me.

  “Why would you have told me to leave? You said you loved me.” I had lost control; I was no longer myself. But I trusted myself or whoever it was I’d become in this moment. Or at least I was trying to. I was trying to make sense. “Why did you do that to me?”

  “Karen.”

  “And now here I am.” I held on to my own cold hands. “Did you love me, Dave? Was that the truth?”

  Dave looked stricken. “Karen,” he said. He was staring into space. I didn’t expect him to say anything else, but then he did. “I didn’t love you enough,” he said. “I thought I did—or it was an easy thing to say, I love you. It was fun. You were fun, and I was happy. But I wasn’t ready for more. I wasn’t ready for what you wanted, a house and a baby and all that. I should have been more clear.”

  My hands were really so cold.

  “I wasn’t ready. I’m so sorry.” I could not look at him but he might have been crying too.

  But who says you get to be ready? Who says you get to take someone’s heart and eat it and then decide you don’t like the taste, so you spit it out and leave her there heartless, empty? An empty space inside? You don’t get to do that and call yourself a grown-up. You don’t get to do that and walk out forgiven. And I wanted to tell him that—calmly, orderly, I wanted to tell him—but what would have been the point, really? How could he have made it up to me now? There we were, almost seven years later. Dave was married and I wouldn’t be here much longer so what would be the point of screaming at him or saying something terrible? What would be the point of telling him he was a monster? Trying to wreak my own sad vengeance even now?