Our Short History

by Lauren Grodstein

  He took my hand in his. If he was startled by the ice, he didn’t say anything. “I will never not be sorry,” he said.

  I pulled my hand back, blew on it. I could keep my own damn self warm.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I didn’t want to hear him apologize anymore. “My son loves you. And I love my son.”

  In front of us, you smacked a serve. Hit the net. “I love him too much to keep him from you. So that’s why you win. I love him more than I ever loved you. More than I love myself. So he gets you. That’s what he wants. I want him to have what he wants. There’s no time left for more fighting.” Here I was quoting my sister.

  Your father squeezed his eyes shut, sniffed a little. This was the most grateful I had ever seen him. This was what he should have looked like when I told him I was pregnant with you.

  “Jacob will finish his school year here. I want that for him. I want him to take tennis lessons and go to games and playdates with Kyle and everything—I want things to be as normal for him as possible. And since he wants to see you, he can see you.”

  Your father opened his eyes. The wind rustled his thinning hair. He had lines around his mouth I didn’t remember, and around his eyes.

  “But if you’re going to be part of his life, you can’t just be Santa Claus, you understand? You can’t dangle new pets in front of him, let him watch scary movies. There are rules about the movies he can watch. You have to learn the rules.”

  “What are the rules?” your father asked quietly.

  “Only G-rated unless it’s a cartoon or superhero. Then PG is okay. You can’t let him watch violent movies. That was insane.”

  “I know,” your father said.

  “He’s only six,” I said. “You have to learn what that means.”

  “Okay,” your father said.

  “I’m trying to prepare him to live without me,” I said. “You have to help with that.”

  “But you’re not—”

  “Please,” I said. I started to shiver and wrapped my afghan a little tighter around myself. I wondered if I had just capitulated, given up the battle before your dad had to even fire a shot. But then I remembered this wasn’t a battle. It wasn’t even a campaign. It was you.

  “Karen,” Dave said, “you’re such a good mother. I just . . . I want you to know how I admire everything you’ve done. I really—I want to be half the parent to him that you are. Not in a . . . not that I want him half the time, not that I’m trying to—”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “If I can be half as good at this as you are, I will be better than I ever could have imagined.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing. I tried to focus on anything else, the wind, the birds, you and your racket and the tennis net before you. My whole life seemed to be puddling around me. My girlhood on Long Island. My sister, Allison. My dreams for myself. My dreams for you.

  What is this life, anyway? Why should I expect it to have been any better than it was?

  How could it have been any better?

  I started to shiver harder. He put his arm around me. When your practice ended and you saw that he was here, your smile bloomed like a firework. You dropped your expensive tennis racket and came racing over. “Dad!” You barreled into him. Your dad managed to hug you while keeping his strong warm arm around me.

  “Hey, Jacob,” your father said. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you too,” you said, and huddled underneath his other arm.

  I LET YOUR father walk us upstairs, even though the apartment was a mess, even though I had nothing to offer him besides frozen chicken nuggets and tap water.

  “You guys are set up?” your father asked. “You want me to order pizza for dinner?”

  “Mom, can he?”

  I let your father order us a pizza. I kept waiting for that feeling to return, that feeling of capitulation, but instead I just felt like I was okay. I would survive for you. I retreated to the bedroom, took off the wool cap, tied a scarf around my head. I thought about makeup and then forgot about it. My bed was made and the medications were all lined up across my chest of drawers and the wig was on the wig stand by the window and on the night table sat a big jug of water, and there were towels piled up on one side of my bed for night sweats and a bucket next to my bed and also a walker in case I ever felt weak, but so far I’d never felt weak enough to use it (when I felt that weak, I just stayed in bed), but overall I didn’t think my room looked too terrible, I mean, it didn’t look like a morgue or anything. The pictures on the wall were all cheerful; they were pictures of you.

  I looked over at the box where I’d been keeping this manuscript and a few other things I had for you. “Dave?” I called. He was looking at your math homework with you, I think trying to assess your handwriting. “Dave?”

  He poked his head into the room.

  “I want to show you some stuff,” I said. The pain flared. I pretended it wasn’t there.

  Then your father came in, and I showed him this box, and the papers and the photographs I wanted you to have one day. I showed him my father’s old hat. I showed him the album I had from when you were a baby and the album I had from when I was a baby. I showed him the platinum ring.

  “When it seems like it will fit him, and he’s responsible enough not to lose it, please give it to him. I think maybe at his bar mitzvah.” I was kneeling by the box, your father cross-legged on the floor next to me. “You do know what a bar mitzvah is, right?”

  “Karen, come on.”

  “It was my grandfather’s. He hid with it in the forest in Hungary. From the Nazis. It belonged to his father before him. It was his wedding ring.” I squeezed my fingers around it, then put it in his hand. “I think it might be a good luck charm.”

  “You think so?”

  I considered all the luck in my life. “Yes,” I said. “But now my fingers are too swollen for it. I used to wear it every day.”

  “I remember.”

  Your father took the ring and slid it on his finger, the way a person sometimes does when given a ring, but then he remembered himself and immediately started taking it off. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to—”

  “No, you can,” I said. “You can wear it until it’s time for Jacob to have it.” I closed my hand around his hand. “And also there’s a manuscript in here, but it’s for him only. It’s not for you. If he has questions about it—well, it’s for him when he’s older. When he’s eighteen. Allie knows about it, but just in case . . .” I trailed off, looked out my window for a minute. My own beautiful street. I was still holding Dave’s hand.

  “Just in case of what?”

  A pedestrian, a bicyclist. Two taxis with their lights turned on. “I just want you to know it’s there too. It’s the most important thing I have for him,” I said. “Besides the money. But that’s kind of complicated. Lots of different accounts.”

  Dave looked concerned: What was I telling him, exactly? “Allie knows about that?”

  “Of course,” I said, even though I realized I’d been meaning to send her the paperwork, the power of attorney, the advanced directives, the bank account stuff. I’d meant to do that for months now.

  “I mean, you still have lots of time, right?” Dave asked.

  I said nothing. The rogue cells.

  “Can I help you stand?” he asked me.

  I gave him my arm, and he helped me to stand and then he helped me to the kitchen. You were sitting at the kitchen table. You were holding the pencil in that weird way you have.

  “Mom, are you okay?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Really?” you said.

  Oh, Jakey.

  “I am,” I said. “I’m totally starving.”

  “That’s good,” you said, and stood to give me a little hug while Dave poured us water from the tap in the refrigerator, and I pulled you close by your thin sharp shoulder.<
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  And then the pizza came, and the three of us sat around the kitchen table. You got tomato sauce all over your face. Dave said something that made you laugh. I realized we hadn’t done your twenty minutes of reading yet and we’d have to do it before bed. You told a joke about zombies that neither Dave nor I totally understood.

  And then I started floating out of myself, the way I sometimes did, or the way I seemed to do more and more. As I floated, I was pleased to see us all sitting around the table: you and your mother and your father, as I’d once imagined it years ago. Eating pizza. Talking about nothing.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m right here, Jakey.” I always would be, you know.

  You took a too-big bite, whisking off half of the cheese. I wiped your face with a napkin. You squirmed and moved away. I was your mother, Jacob. I am so grateful I got to be your mother. I am so grateful you were my son.

  I hope that wherever and whenever this book finds you, it finds you as happy as you were at that moment—as the two of us were, the three of us, even. Eating pizza around the kitchen table, no big deal, a Thursday night. Remember that we loved each other. And that once upon a time it was the two of us, and we were our own magical family.

  SO NOW, DAYS later, I’m trying to think of what else I have to say to you. There’s so much, Jacob, but I think I’ve said most of it in many different ways throughout this book. I suppose I could edit it now—I suppose there are things that I could say more carefully, that I could say better than I did. I suppose I could make it all seem prettier than it was, or that I was a better person. But I won’t. That’s not what this project was for.

  The most important thing, Jacob, is that I loved you more than you can ever possibly imagine. The most important thing is that I always will.

  And I’m so tired now—I want to finish this book while I still have the strength to make sense. I want this document to feel real to you, not like some sentimental mishmash or some whitewash. I want you to pick up this book and know the truth. The truth is that even more than I want to be healthy, I want you to be okay. Even more than I want to live forever, I want you to live forever.

  But I guess the last thing I want to say in this little book of mine, Jacob, is thank you. Thank you, baby boy. For as long as I’ve known you, you have given me the strength I need to keep living. I look at you and I feel strong. Every day you help me feel strong.

  And thank you for being eternal, so that when the time comes—whenever it comes—I will find the strength to close my eyes.

  Acknowledgments

  I could not have written this novel without my sister-in-law Mychi Grodstein’s encouragement. She and her family are active in the fight against ovarian cancer and have all my admiration and support.

  Dr. James Brust, Dr. Thomas Uldrick, and Dr. Elliot Grodstein provided crucial medical information, as did Susan Grubar’s wonderful Memoir of a Debulked Woman.

  Micah Lasher and Joshua Zeitz helped me understand the ins and outs of campaign life, and my friend Allison Jaffin taught me all about New York City politics. Jennifer Kerrs Singer provided professional insight into the way children experience grief.

  The terrific writers Elisa Albert, Kelly Braffet, and Lisa Zeidner guided me as I revised this manuscript. William Boggess made enormously helpful suggestions about its structure.

  The Kennedys introduced me to Mercer Island years ago and have given me the gift of a warm welcome whenever I return. Adele and Jerry Grodstein have done the same in Bergen County.

  Julie Barer is the best partner a writer could have: wise, loving, and generous. My editor, Kathy Pories, is empathetic and insightful beyond imagining. I am profoundly grateful to have these two women in my life, for their smarts, their enthusiasm, and their friendships.

  Nathaniel Freeman has granted me the blessing of raising a beautiful little boy. I would not have known how to write this book without him.

  Ben Freeman holds my hand, reads my drafts, and pours me a glass of wine whenever I need one, and for these reasons and many more I love him dearly.

  Finally, I want to acknowledge the memories of mothers I’ve known whose lives stand as monuments to love, especially that of my dear friend Marilyn Feingold.

  LAUREN GRODSTEIN is the author of four works of fiction: the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family, The Explanation for Everything, Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love, and the story collection The Best of Animals. She directs the creative writing MFA program at Rutgers–Camden and lives with her husband and son in New Jersey. (Author photo by Ken Yanoviak.)

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  © 2017 by Lauren Grodstein.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  eISBN 978-1-61620-718-2