Swimming Across the Hudson

by Joshua Henkin

  “We might have the right, but it wouldn’t be smart. Besides, have you thought about Mom and Dad? You know how much this is going to upset them. Don’t you think we owe them something?”

  In a fit of anger I almost said, “What about you? Do you owe them so much that you should live straight? Do you owe them a daughter-in-law and grandchildren? Don’t lecture me about disappointing Mom and Dad.”

  Jonathan leaned toward me. “Let’s say my birth mother knew when she got pregnant that, if she gave me up, I’d find her someday. It might have been too much for her to bear. Maybe she’d have had an abortion.”

  Of course this had occurred to him. It had occurred to me too. When you’re adopted, everything’s contingent. All roads are mired with offshoots; you always see the path not taken. No wonder I studied philosophy in college, all those counterfactuals piled on each other. What if? What if? What if?

  A letter arrived, written by my mother and signed by both my parents.

  Dear Ben,

  We got your letter. We were happy you had the chance to meet Susan. (Do you call her that directly? Susan? Mrs. Green? It must be hard to figure out the etiquette.)

  The weather’s good here too, though you’re right, it’s not as nice as where you guys live. Dad thinks if we lived in California we’d miss the change of seasons. But I’m sure we’d get used to it. We’d probably have more trouble with the pace. No one seems to work very hard out there.

  Life’s been busy for both of us. Things are tougher than ever for the homeless. Mayor Giuliani is the worst. I see those advertisements on the subways—the ones with the thought bubbles coming from a passenger upset that a panhandler is invading his “space”—and I just want to scream. Have you ever noticed how many homeless people panhandle with pets? It’s a sad state of affairs when people are more willing to help dogs than human beings.

  I’m glad you’re proud of the work Jenny does. Dad and I are too. It’s true that we don’t know her very well, but the little I know of her makes me think that she must be decent and principled. I’ve never imagined her as someone who watches MTV all day long. You or Jonathan either. If the world had more people like you boys, we’d be doing a lot better than we are.

  Send our love to Jonathan. We hope you’re well. We’ll talk to you both soon.

  Love,

  Mom and Dad

  I was rereading the letter when they called. Telepathy, perhaps. I was prepared for them to sound as casual as their letter, but they seemed concerned.

  “What was she like?” my father asked.

  “She was friendly,” I said. I didn’t want to be more specific.

  “Come on,” my mother said.

  I was blocked, my brain rattling with adjectives, as if I were writing a personal ad for Susan.

  My father must have read my mind. “What if you had to write an essay about her? How would you describe her to your readers?”

  Always the teacher, my father. Compare and contrast your birth and adoptive parents. Describe your birth mother in five hundred words or less.

  “Are there particular things she likes to do?” my mother asked.

  “She likes to read.”

  “That’s good,” said my father.

  “Why’s that good?”

  “Come on, Ben. You’re a big reader yourself.”

  Already I could see why I was resisting. My parents were sitting in judgment. It’s good that she reads; it would be bad if she didn’t. I too had been a snob. I disapproved of Susan’s choice of authors; I was happy she made earrings. But my parents were judging me as well. Is our son’s birth mother intelligent? Does she have good taste?

  “Does she work?” my mother asked.

  “She makes earrings.”

  “But how does she support herself?”

  “That’s part of the reason she’s come to San Francisco. Some stores want to sell her stuff.”

  “She’d have to be unusual,” my mother said, “to make a living off her jewelry.”

  “Maybe she is unusual.”

  “Of course she is.” Several seconds passed in silence. I knew my mother was worried that she sounded condescending. She was being condescending, but she was also serious. “She gave birth to you, Ben. She’s the most special person in the world.”

  “Please, Mom.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Does she have views?” my father asked.

  “Views?”

  “You know. About the world.”

  “Everyone has views, Dad. She’s a human being.”

  “But what are they? Does she have opinions about politics or religion, for example?”

  Was he checking whom Susan voted for, this woman who came from the state of Indiana, home of the great Dan Quayle? As for religion, I was tempted to remind him that he’d had ideas about her religion. He’d told me she was Jewish.

  “I only spent an hour with her. How can you expect me to answer that?”

  I knew the question we were heading toward. It came next, from my mother.

  “Did she go to college?”

  My parents must have suspected that she hadn’t gone to college. She’d given birth to me in high school. I could have told them that she’d done some junior college, but that would have confirmed their prejudices. Were they trying to remind me that they were better educated than she was? Education, attainment. My father had gotten his Ph.D. from Harvard and was one of the most respected scholars in his field. My mother had gone to Vassar and then briefly to Yale Law School and now was a professional success. She’d become an expert on the homeless; she was quoted in The New York Times. They’d been proud of Jonathan and me when we’d gotten into Yale, but to them it had been a matter of course. Was there any doubt that we’d go to the best colleges? Then Jonathan enrolled in medical school, while I floundered around for several years before getting my teaching certificate. Teaching was important. My parents knew that. When Jonathan and I had been in high school my father had served on the advisory board, urging the school to raise salaries so that better teachers could be hired. He too was a teacher. But he was an academic. That made all the difference. He never said this directly (he couldn’t have; he wouldn’t have), but he was disappointed that I’d become a high school teacher; I’d set my sights too low. He frequently asked me about my plans. His attitude toward my teaching was like his attitude toward Jenny: This is all right for now, but what comes next?

  “What difference does it make if she went to college?”

  “It doesn’t make a difference,” my mother said. “We just want to know about her.”

  “But it’s what you ask about. Are education and career the only things that matter? Why don’t you ask me what music she likes or what her favorite movies are?”

  “Okay, what music does she like?”

  “She likes the Sex Pistols, Mom. She screams like hell when Sid Vicious comes on the radio. She shoots heroin into her veins, and she’s got a big tattoo on her butt. All right?”

  “Ben,” she said coolly, “we just want to make sure you don’t end up disappointed. You’ve gotten all worked up about her, and you don’t even know if you’ll see her again.”

  “I’ll see her again.”

  “Have you heard from her?”

  “No.”

  “Well? She could have gone back to Indiana and not even told you about it. People like her are notoriously unreliable.”

  “People like her?”

  “She gave you up. She doesn’t have a particularly good track record.”

  “Jesus, Mom. She was sixteen years old. You should try to be a little more gracious.”

  “We don’t mean to be ungracious,” she said, “but you’re our son. Your interests are what we’re most concerned about.”

  I couldn’t continue this conversation. I had to get off the phone.

  But once I did, I couldn’t stop thinking about what my mother had said. Was it possible that Susan had gone back to Indiana? It had been two weeks since o
ur lunch, and I hadn’t heard from her.

  In a mild panic, I tried to track her down. I opened the yellow pages and called hotels in the city. I called motels, youth hostels, and bed-and-breakfasts. I spent two hours searching, but without success.

  Exhausted and angry, I dialed information, in case she wasn’t staying at a hotel and had decided to list her number. There were no Susan Greens but several S. Greens, all of whose numbers I took down.

  I called the first number and heard Susan’s voice when the phone was picked up. I was too shocked and relieved to say anything.

  “Who’s this?” she asked.

  “Susan?”

  “Ben.”

  “You recognized my voice.”

  “Of course I did.”

  I felt the seeds of anger. “You had my number. You could have called me.”

  “I was waiting for you to call me. You could have looked me up.” She had made the first move, she said, by flying to San Francisco. Now it was my turn to show some initiative. “This relationship is a two-way street.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Susan. You’re the one who started this. You put me up for adoption, and then, out of the blue, you show up again. You incur some obligations, you know.”

  “I realize that. I just didn’t want to smother you.”

  “Why are you in San Francisco, anyway? For me, I assume.”

  “That’s part of it. And to sell my earrings.”

  “Does that mean you’re here indefinitely?” Now I was worried she’d never leave. She’d buy property in San Francisco. She’d purchase a house next door to Jenny and me.

  “I told you. My life is in flux. Nothing’s definite right now.”

  “Well, you’re living somewhere, aren’t you? I assume I haven’t reached you at a pay phone.”

  “I’ve rented an apartment in the Mission. I have a month-to-month lease.”

  When I got off the phone, I helped Jenny take the laundry out of the dryer.

  “Susan’s living in the Mission,” I said. “She’s renting an apartment and playing mind games with me. ‘You call.’ ‘No, you call.’ Who knows what she’s doing with her time?”

  “I’m sure she’s occupying herself.”

  “But doing what?”

  I thought of a joke I’d heard as a child. What’s ambivalence? It’s when your mother-in-law drives your new car off a cliff. Now ambivalence was this: When your birth mother moved to town, and you worried she would call you and wouldn’t call you, and mostly you found yourself waiting for her, anxious about her, breathless as a ghost, waiting to see what would happen.

  PART II

  Childhood: When Jonathan and I had been so close we’d half believed we were each other. The year we were nine, we switched identities once a month; we swapped bedrooms at night and went to school in each other’s clothes.

  “My name is Jonathan,” I told my mother.

  “I like your name just the way it is.”

  But on the day we switched identities, I refused to answer to any other name.

  “If I had to be someone else I’d be you,” I told Jonathan.

  “And I’d be you,” he said.

  In my father’s closet was a tattered fur hat that he no longer used; he let Jonathan and me cut it into pieces. Jonathan covered his arms with the fur, the way Jacob had done to trick Isaac, dressing up as Esau.

  Jonathan quoted from the Torah. “The voice is the voice of Jacob,” he said, “but the hands are the hands of Esau.”

  We went to a nursery school sponsored by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, because our Jewish day school didn’t start until kindergarten. Before Christmas break, the teacher announced that Santa Claus was coming to school. There was a moment of silence, and then Jonathan’s voice:

  “Who’s Santa Claus?”

  “Don’t you know anything?” I asked.

  Embarrassed by his ignorance, he took it upon himself to learn about Santa Claus. The following year, outside Gimbels, he sat on Santa’s lap.

  “Jews don’t sit on Santa Claus’s lap,” I said.

  “I do.” He told me he was going to convert to Christianity.

  But in second grade, without explanation, he decided that Christianity made no sense. I found him in his bedroom making fun of Jesus, pressed to the door as if he’d been crucified.

  We’d learned at Jewish day school that some branches of Christianity were considered idol worship. You weren’t allowed inside a church—even, the Talmud said, if your life depended on it, even if you were fleeing from a murderer.

  Riverside Church was up the block from our home. It was a huge building; we had once picked it out looking down from an airplane. When Jonathan and I practiced tennis against its wall, I thought of my father years before, playing handball on Delancey Street.

  “Why can’t you go inside a church?” my mother asked.

  “Because it’s idol worship,” I said.

  “That’s nonsense.” She’d visited churches all over the world. She’d stood in Notre-Dame; there was no feeling, she said, like looking up at the ceiling of one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Late at night, I found her sitting with my father in the living room listening to Handel’s Messiah. “If I had my way,” she said, “I’d take you boys to churches, mosques, and ashrams. It’s important to see how other people live.”

  But she didn’t have her way. Jonathan and I went only to synagogues. And we continued to hit tennis balls off Riverside Church. It was a beautiful building, my parents said, but we knew what went on inside it.

  “They eat Jesus’ body,” Jonathan said, “and wash it down with his blood.”

  “No they don’t,” said my mother.

  Jonathan and I didn’t believe her. Jonathan pressed his back against the wall of the church, pretending to be crucified. “We’re idol worshippers,” he said. He stood frozen like that against the building while I hit the tennis ball again and again, seeing how close I could get to his body without actually hitting it.

  When we were ten we searched for our birth certificates. I knew I was born in July 1964 and Jonathan was born that December. But we couldn’t find our birth certificates. We didn’t believe we had real ones.

  “You have birth certificates,” my mother said.

  “Were we born in a hospital?” I asked.

  “Of course you were.”

  “I was born,” Jonathan said, “by the banks of the Nile.” He liked the story of Moses’ birth, this baby left in a bassinet in the water, taken by Pharaoh’s daughter to be brought up by the king.

  My mother smiled at Jonathan. “You were born in a hospital like everyone else.”

  She wouldn’t be more specific than that. We wanted to know how much we’d weighed at birth. We wanted to see our birth certificates.

  “I don’t know where they are,” she said. Her eyes had the glossy cast of someone beginning to forget. I told her she was growing senile.

  “I’m not growing senile. I’m being normal. Normal people sometimes forget.”

  I didn’t believe she’d forgotten about our birth certificates. We had slipped into the world without anyone’s noticing; there was no real record of us.

  My mother had read us a book called Are You My Mother? in which a bird goes from one animal to another, asking whether she has given birth to him. Jonathan and I did the same thing. I had always been careful not to talk to strangers, but now I made an exception. We went up to women walking along Broadway and asked, “Are you my mother?”

  At home we made our own birth certificates and laid them before us.

  “Mom and Dad burned our real ones,” I said.

  “They used them as kindling,” said Jonathan.

  For years we watched the Knicks on TV. Our favorite player was Bill Bradley, who had gone to Princeton, where my father once lectured. Bill Bradley had a photographic memory; he’d been a Rhodes scholar. We thought that with practice we could be like him, so we came home from school and sat on our beds, tryi
ng to memorize the phone book.

  “Forget it,” Jonathan said the year we turned eleven. “We’ll never be as smart as Bill Bradley.”

  In school we’d learned about the rabbis of old who could put a pin through a book of the Talmud and name every letter the pin passed through. Jonathan told me Bill Bradley could do that.

  “Bill Bradley doesn’t even know what the Talmud is,” I said.

  “Yes he does.”

  For Jonathan’s eleventh birthday, I bought him Twenty-one Days to a Better Vocabulary. We worked on our memories, testing each other on words we didn’t know. We took the phone we had made from two cups and string, and whispered to each other through it.

  “Hello,” I said. “Hello, my brother.”

  “Eulogy.” He tugged on the cord to make sure I was holding on.

  “Encomium.”

  “Panegyric.”

  That spring, he enrolled in a speed-reading course. When he came home from class he pretended he could read as fast as he turned pages, and I pretended I believed him.

  “I read The Book of Lists,” he said. He flipped through hundreds of pages, then pressed the book against his forehead to show me how much knowledge he’d absorbed. “I’m reading through every book in the library. Soon there will be nothing left to know.”

  We played on the basketball team and sang in school chorus. We took almost all our classes together. In seventh grade, we decided to study Spanish instead of French, though we knew our father would be disappointed. He’d been stationed in France during World War II and believed every cultured person should study French.

  “French,” he told us, “is a beautiful language.” We were sitting in his study. On the shelf behind him were the books he’d written: War and Empire in Soviet Russia. Leninism: A Life and an Idea. Doing the Dance: Soviet Jews and the KGB. A Francophile Visits Russia. He’d dedicated this last book to Jonathan and me.

  “It’s a language for frogs,” Jonathan said. We wanted to learn Spanish so we could communicate with the Puerto Rican kids in Riverside Park. We played basketball with them after school, shouting “¿Qué pasa?” as we ran down the court, as though we could speak Spanish too.