Swimming Across the Hudson

by Joshua Henkin

  “Do you read that?” Was Susan a Republican? I thought of my mother, a member of NOW and the ACLU, who used to have nightmares about Barry Goldwater chasing her through alleys in the middle of the night.

  “Sometimes. My husband gave me a subscription. He wants me to learn more about politics. But I’m not interested.”

  She pointed to a framed photo on the table. “That’s Scottie.” He had a wide-set, open face, and green eyes, the color of Susan’s, and light brown hair in a crew cut. On his chin was a birthmark. He was standing in front of a gray Oldsmobile, flashing a peace sign at the camera.

  “I took that picture,” Susan said. “You can see my thumb in the corner.”

  I touched my finger to the glass.

  “It was a Sunday,” she said. “We’d gone to church that morning. He died a week later, five days short of his twenty-first birthday. He was driving that car in the picture. The day he died, if I’d held him back for breakfast, if I’d kissed him good-bye, if I’d asked him one simple question—all I needed was a second’s delay, and everything would have been different.

  “He was on furlough from the Navy at the time. The other driver was killed too. He was the same age as Scottie. I wanted to know whose fault it was, but the wreck was so big the police couldn’t be sure. I wanted it to be someone’s fault, even if it had to be Scottie’s. I can still see the hospital clearly. The other boy’s mother was there too. We’d already been told that everything was over. I didn’t know what to do, so I just fed all my change into the candy machine, even though I wasn’t hungry.”

  Susan was smiling at Scottie’s picture, almost as if she expected him to smile back. I thought of parents whose children lay in comas, who spent hours every day talking to them, thinking that if only they tried a little harder they would get a response.

  “He’s handsome,” I told her.

  “He looks a little like you.”

  “You’re right,” I said, although I didn’t think he did.

  She led me into her bedroom. Being there made me uncomfortable; I had to resist the urge to look around. On her desk, right in front of me, sat a stray earring. It was silver and shaped like Saturn, each of its rings a shade lighter than the next, moving out from the center.

  “Did you do that?” I asked.

  Susan nodded.

  “When did you start to make earrings?”

  “In eleventh grade.”

  “The year you got pregnant . . .”

  “Right.”

  “Did I derail you?”

  “You?”

  “You know. The pregnancy. I have this idea that you were going places and I came along and screwed things up. Maybe you could have had your own line of jewelry. Then you wouldn’t be selling your earrings in just a few stores.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted my own line of jewelry. It would have been too much work.”

  I asked her whether she was religious. I was trying to distract myself while, from the corner of my eye, I could see her unmade bed, and on it an unfolded pink nightgown.

  She told me she was.

  “What denomination are you?” I wondered how she’d feel if she knew that Jonathan used to pretend that he was crucified while I hit tennis balls against Riverside Church.

  “Catholic.” She reached inside her blouse and pulled out a gold cross so tiny it looked like a sliver of metal.

  “Do you wear that all the time?”

  “Except for the day I met you. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Did you baptize me?” I asked.

  “Of course not. I was giving you up. I couldn’t make decisions about how you’d be raised.”

  “You could have tried to place me with a Catholic family.”

  “It didn’t matter to me. I just wanted you to have parents who loved you.”

  “You found them,” I said. “I promise you that.”

  She looked as if she were going to cry.

  The sun was setting on the Mission, dispersing across the rooftops. “I’m glad you sent me a Mother’s Day card,” she said. She rested her hand on the window ledge. Her veins caught the light of the sunset.

  “It was nothing.”

  “You didn’t have to do it. It meant a lot to me.”

  The phone rang in the kitchen, and Susan went to pick it up. I was alone. I heard the muffled sound of her voice down the hall. I stood quietly, allowing myself to look around the room for the first time. Susan’s closet was ajar. I opened it the rest of the way. A gray silk scarf hung from a peg. I raised it to my nose to see if I could smell her, but I couldn’t detect any scent. I closed the closet door and stood still awhile. Then, quietly, carefully, I opened drawer after drawer of her bureau, finding T-shirts in piles, blue jeans, slacks, towels, sheets, and a few light sweaters. In the top drawer were underpants and bras. The sight of them shocked me. Did I think she didn’t wear any underpants? I shut the drawer firmly. Reflexively, I opened it again. Different colors. Black, white, red, some stripes and patterns. Cotton, silk, lace. I reached out to touch them. I raised a pair to my face, feeling the fabric against me. I quickly put it back and shut the drawer tight. A sick feeling overcame me.

  I sat down on her bed, then got up and went to her desk. Papers were spread across it. An Indiana University mug held pens, pencils, and paper clips. An envelope lay beneath a roll of Scotch tape. I picked it up and read the return address. Indianapolis, Indiana. I took out the card and read it.

  Dear Susan,

  I’m sending you another check. I hope you’re doing all right. We miss you here—everyone does, but especially me.

  I saw Kate at the supermarket the other day. She asked about you. Your friends think this is strange, you going all the way across the country to see your “son.” He could visit you here if he wanted. Believe me, he has his own life. I’m the one who needs you. Maybe I’ve been a bit remote recently, especially since Scottie died. But I’m willing to work on things.

  I’m being patient with you, but really, how much longer can you expect me to be patient? I see our friends around town. I try hard to portray this in the best possible light, but it’s difficult. Everyone thinks you’ve flipped. They say you’ve had some sort of breakdown. I tell them you haven’t, but sometimes I’m not sure.

  Remember that I’m thinking about you. If you need more money, let me know. The whole state of Indiana misses you.

  Love,

  Frank

  I heard Susan’s footsteps coming down the hall. I shoved the card and the envelope into my front pants pocket and swung around to face her. The edge of the envelope pressed against my belt.

  She’d drawn me into her life, and there I was, rifling through her underwear drawer, reading her mail. I was a snoop, a voyeur. I wanted more than anything to leave her apartment, but that would have raised her suspicions.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” But everything was wrong. We both were pathetic. What was I doing in her apartment? Frank was right (Frank? I acted like I knew him). Susan had no business being in San Francisco. I didn’t care how many earrings she’d sold. She’d come here to see me; we both knew that. “Look at us,” I said. “What are we doing here?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Why are you pretending you live here?” I was yelling now. I hated her—hated her wide-eyed obtuseness, hated what she’d done to me. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be getting on with my life.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  I took a step closer to her. “You gave me up when I was barely two months old. Do you think that doesn’t have consequences?”

  “Let me tell you something. Giving you up wasn’t easy. But it was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  “You weren’t doing me any favors.”

  “I certainly was. Your life would have been a dead end if I’d kept you. We’d have been on welfare. You went to Yale, in case you forgot. Do you know how many people would love to
be in your shoes?”

  “Don’t talk to me about Yale. I’ve heard it all before. I should appreciate my opportunities.”

  “Well, you should. Do you think Scottie was able to even think about Yale?”

  “What does Scottie have to do with this?”

  “He has everything to do with it. He was my son. Do you think he joined the Navy because he liked ships, or because he wanted to go to war? Not a chance. It was simply a way to get ahead. He was dealing with reality.”

  “Who says he was any less happy than I am?”

  “I’m not talking about happy. I just wish you’d stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “You’re one to talk.” She’d come to town, I reminded her, with her sob story. Her son had died, she’d separated from her husband, she cried every year on my birthday. Did I really have a choice whether to meet her?

  “Of course you did. I never asked for your pity.”

  “Not directly. But everything about you demands pity.”

  At home I felt one thing only—the need to make amends. I should have left matters as they were. Susan probably wouldn’t have noticed anything missing, and she never would have suspected me. But I couldn’t accept what I’d done. So I sent her husband a letter.

  Dear Mr. Green,

  You may not recognize my name, but I’m your wife’s son—the one she gave birth to in high school. I want you to know she’s doing all right and talks about you all the time. I was at her apartment recently, and she was reading a copy of The American Spectator. She appreciates the subscription you gave her. She enjoys the magazine. The separation is hard for her. I’m confident the two of you will work things out.

  Best wishes,

  Ben Suskind

  I was surprised, now that Tara had left for camp, that I missed her as much as I did. The apartment felt emptier than I’d expected. She’d be gone until the end of August.

  The day she left, Jenny and I took her to the bus stop. As the bus pulled out of sight, there were tears in Jenny’s eyes; then I realized there were tears in mine too.

  That night I said, “Privacy’s not what it’s cracked up to be, is it?”

  “It sure isn’t.” We were in the den, watching a video. We’d ordered in pizza, the remains of which were in the box; we were lying half naked on the floor. Yet our minds were on Tara.

  “This is the longest I’ll have gone without seeing her,” Jenny said.

  “I was thinking about that.”

  “In seven years she’ll be leaving for college. That’s less than three thousand days away.”

  The first week Tara was gone, Jenny and I would find ourselves in her bedroom, talking, doing a crossword puzzle, sometimes reading a novel to each other. It felt as if we were communing with her. We had another sabbath dinner the first Friday night she was away, but it didn’t feel the same without her. I kept looking at her empty seat as if I expected to find her there.

  At the beginning of the second week, we got a postcard from her.

  Dear Mom and Ben,

  Please send peanut butter. Camp food sucks. Amy and I have been hunting for berries.

  Love,

  Tara

  P.S. The whole bunk listens to Oasis. Ugh.

  “She’s happy!” Jenny said. “She’s doing well.”

  “Who’s Amy?”

  “I don’t know. A bunkmate. Someone who likes berries.”

  We started to adjust to our new freedom. We ate out a little more often. We let the dishes pile up in the sink. We got stoned one night with some pot a friend of Jenny’s had given her; we hadn’t gotten stoned in almost a year.

  Jenny nuzzled against me. “I like having you to myself.”

  Two weeks after Tara left, Jenny enrolled in a photography course at the San Francisco Art Institute. She was excited about the class. She wanted to spend the summer taking photographs and experimenting in the darkroom.

  But her work got busier. Her rape client’s semen sample came back a match, and this led Jenny to believe it was a closed case; her client should plea-bargain, she thought.

  Her client changed his story, however. Originally he’d said he hadn’t been at the scene of the crime. Now he admitted that he’d had sex with the accuser, but said the sex was consensual. Jenny was suspicious. Her client and the accuser were from such different backgrounds they were unlikely to have spent time together. Under questioning, though, the accuser admitted having been to the bar that Jenny’s client had named. Still, the accuser said, she’d never met him, never even seen him until he raped her that night.

  Jenny was convinced that her client was lying; he’d lied once already, after all. In rape cases like this one, the defense often tried to smear the accuser’s sexual reputation. Jenny owed her client the best defense possible, but she didn’t think she could employ such tactics.

  “I’m being a bad lawyer,” she told me.

  “Come on, Jen. You’re the best lawyer I know.”

  “You live with me. You’re biased.”

  “I’m not biased. I just recognize something good when I see it.”

  Jenny told her client that she thought she could get him a reduced sentence. She did think that, but mostly she just wanted to get rid of the case.

  “It will be good to go away,” I said. I was taking her on a vacation, as I’d promised. We would drive down the coast to Big Sur and spend a long weekend there. “You’ll have a chance to get your mind off things.”

  “Maybe we should just skip going away.”

  “Jen. Come on.”

  “You’re right. I want to go. And you’ve been planning this.”

  On the way to Big Sur, Jenny sat next to me while I drove. Our camping gear was in back. We’d spend one night camping and two nights at a bed-and-breakfast. We stopped for lunch at Half Moon Bay, then got back into the car. Jenny took photos of me as we drove.

  “You’re going to end up with a lot of pictures of my right ear.”

  “I’m experimenting.” She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “Sometimes I wish I were disgustingly rich. I could be one of those ladies who have tea all the time. I’d sit in a Viennese salon and fan myself.”

  “You’d be bored stiff as a tea lady.”

  “It would be nice not to have to go to court. I could just take pictures.”

  “But you love being a PD.”

  “I’m burning out. With photography, the worst thing you can do is take bad pictures. You’re not ruining anyone’s life.”

  “Or saving anyone’s either.”

  Jenny shrugged. “Sometimes I just need to get away.”

  “That’s why we’re on vacation.”

  We bought salmon steaks and grilled them at our campsite. We went to bed early and made love in our tent on top of our sleeping bags, then lay quietly, staring at the stars through the mesh of our tent.

  “Big Sur,” Jenny said, pressing her face to my chest. “I can hear the bears growl.” When I’d hiked the Appalachian Trail I’d come across a bear cub. The story had gotten embellished over time, so that now it was a grizzly and I’d actually struggled with it. It had become a joke between Jenny and me.

  The next morning we moved to the bed-and-breakfast, where our room was large and comfortable, with a complimentary bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. Out back was a Jacuzzi. Downstairs, twenties and thirties show tunes played on the jukebox.

  Monday, when we drove home, was my birthday. On our way back, Jenny took a turn before Half Moon Bay, saying she had a surprise for me. She drove me to a bowling alley, which had my name and a happy-birthday greeting on the marquee.

  Balloons were taped to the chairs behind our lane. Jenny had arranged to have seventies music playing on the speakers. A waiter and a waitress came to take our orders. They were dressed as Elton John and Kiki Dee.

  “Happy birthday.” Jenny kissed me. “We can eat Hostess cupcakes and listen to the Bee Gees and Andy Gibb.” She took a picture of me with the waiter and the waitress.
/>
  A Donna Summer song was playing. “Dance with me,” Jenny said. She rested her left hand on my hip; she cupped her right hand behind my neck and led me down the lane toward the pins, then danced me slowly back.

  She uncorked the champagne, which we’d saved from our room at the bed-and-breakfast. I bowled a few frames while Jenny danced to “The Hustle.”

  “What do you think would have happened if we’d met in the seventies?”

  “We probably would have pulled each other’s hair,” Jenny said.

  “I mean the late seventies. When we were teenagers. Do you think we would have liked each other?”

  “I doubt it. I was a wild teenager. I didn’t go out with boys like you.”

  “I’d have liked you,” I told her.

  Jenny shook her head. “It’s good we didn’t meet until now.”

  I’d thought our vacation would rejuvenate Jenny, but after a day back at work, she was tense again. Her rape suspect hadn’t gone away, and she’d gotten a new load of cases. Tara had been at camp for a month. We’d received only two letters since her first card, and she’d asked us not to come up for visiting day. She wanted to be on her own the whole summer. She’d see us when she got back.

  “It’s a sign she’s happy,” I told Jenny. “No news is good news.”

  But Jenny clearly missed her.

  Soon after we returned from our trip, Jenny was commissioned by The San Francisco Bay Guardian to do a photo essay on Polk Gulch, where teenage boys sold sex to men and where there had been a series of unsolved murders. Jenny’s photography teacher had recommended her to the editor.

  At first, Jenny hesitated. “The summer’s supposed to be relaxing, and I’m spreading myself too thin.” She needed to concentrate on her work. In a month, we’d be going to New York for my parents’ annual Labor Day party and to surprise my father on his seventy-fifth birthday. That too would break up her routine.

  She was flattered, though, that her teacher had recommended her, and she wanted the chance to publish her photos. So she took the assignment.

  I was nervous. Polk Gulch was a seedy, dangerous place. Jenny would spend nights walking the streets, cruising with her camera around her neck, cozying up to the Johns by the dim light of a bar.