Swimming Across the Hudson

by Joshua Henkin

  “They came to New Jersey,” Susan said, “and we spent the afternoon together.”

  “Did they meet my birth father?”

  She shook her head. “He was gone. He turned eighteen and was off to the Marines.”

  Susan excused herself and left the kitchen, then came back a minute later with an envelope. “Open it,” she said.

  Inside was an old photo, the colors bleeding across the paper. A girl was holding a baby. My mother and father stood on either side of her.

  “It’s you and me,” Susan said, “with your parents.”

  Everyone looked so young. My parents were smiling, but Susan’s face was drawn. She must have been thinking that this was the last time she’d hold me. It was strange to see them together, the different reactions to the same event, as though two photographs had been blended. I was two months old, and asleep. It might have been the oldest picture of me that existed.

  I tried to recall my first impression of Susan that day she’d walked into the Ethiopian restaurant. “You thought about keeping me, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Of course I did.”

  “But?”

  “I didn’t really have a choice. My parents wouldn’t let me.”

  “And if they had?”

  “I probably still would have given you up. It was the right thing to do. For both of us. But I wish my parents hadn’t forced me. That way I wouldn’t have spent so much time persuading myself that I’d have made a different decision.” The lines near her mouth looked etched in; she seemed to have aged in the last several months.

  “What about abortion?”

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because for a long time I pretended I wasn’t pregnant, and by the time I admitted it, it was too late. Besides, I’m Catholic.”

  “You’re opposed to abortion?”

  “Except for rape and incest.”

  “Well, I’m happy I wasn’t the product of rape or incest.” I was trying to lighten the mood. But the words came out clunky and badly timed.

  “Did you use contraception?” Some Catholics wouldn’t, I knew.

  Susan looked embarrassed. Could I blame her? I was asking her for answers I only half wanted, talking about things we shouldn’t have been discussing.

  But she answered me. Perhaps she felt she had to. “We used rubbers.”

  A shudder of discomfort ran through me. Maybe this was a sign that she really was my mother: I was embarrassed to think of her having sex.

  “I don’t want to discuss this,” Susan said.

  She was right.

  She told me she knew I’d written her husband. She spoke without a hint of emotion. She was making me wait. And I was behaving like the person I was—a squirming son, caught by his mother. “How did you get his address?”

  “I assumed it was the same as yours,” I answered.

  “Why did you write him?”

  I could have told her I hadn’t been thinking. But I had to do better than that. “I know this doesn’t make sense to you, but I feel partly responsible for the problems in your marriage. You left your husband and came to see me.”

  “That doesn’t mean you caused our problems.”

  “I was just trying to help.” Although this sounded absurd, it was true.

  “If anything, it made matters worse.”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “Why did you think it would help? You’re a stranger to Frank, and he doesn’t like strangers knowing about his marital problems. I had to assure him that I hadn’t set this up.”

  “Set it up?”

  “He thought I asked you to write the letter—that it was my way of telling him I was still thinking about him. Frank thought you were being patronizing.”

  “I know. He wrote me.”

  “He did?”

  I nodded.

  “Look how out of hand this is getting. You’ve gotten us into an absurd triangle.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have written him. But I don’t know why he thought I was being patronizing.”

  “He didn’t like your comment about The American Spectator.”

  “What comment?”

  She walked out of the kitchen and returned holding my letter. Frank must have mailed it to her. “‘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.’”

  I told her she was right. It was a silly comment.

  “It was also a lie. I don’t enjoy the magazine, and you know it. Frank thought your comment was snide. He realizes your politics are different from his.”

  “He has no way of knowing that.”

  “Come on, Ben. You’re a Jewish kid from Manhattan.”

  I was tempted to tell her she was being anti-Semitic, but it was neither true nor to the point.

  “The fact is, you can be patronizing. Like those comments about my earrings.”

  “What comments? I’ve been supportive of your work. I’ve told you that. I feel bad that you got pregnant and your career was derailed.”

  “You imagine my career was derailed. I never said anything about it. You like that I might have been a famous artist. As if having a birth mother who’s just a normal person wouldn’t be good enough for you.”

  “Look, Susan, I’m sorry I wrote your husband. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  I continued to think about Jonathan’s birth papers, so I called information in Chicago and asked for a listing for Alfred and Rebecca Harris. This was just exploratory. I was simply finding out what was possible.

  No Alfred Harris was listed. Two Rebecca Harrises were, one of them with an unpublished number. The operator gave me the published number and address.

  I considered throwing the information out, but changed my mind. Had Jonathan been interested in my past, he’d have done what I was doing—and without telling me. The man with a million secrets. And what were the chances of my finding his birth mother? He’d been born more than thirty years ago.

  I could write this woman and tell her the truth—that she might have given birth to my brother and that I hoped to meet her. But that wouldn’t work. She may not have wanted to meet Jonathan; she surely didn’t want to meet me, someone who would remind her of what had happened without allowing her to see the child she’d given up.

  So I wrote this letter.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Harris,

  Almost thirty-one years ago in Chicago, I was born to you, I believe. I have often wondered who and where you are. I live in San Francisco, but I’d be willing to fly to Chicago to meet you. Don’t worry, I won’t disrupt your life. I’m not looking for money or any other kind of help. I just want to ask you some questions. If you don’t want to meet me I’ll understand, but I hope you’ll agree to my request. I look forward to hearing from you.

  Yours truly,

  Jonathan Suskind

  I addressed an envelope and put my work address in the upper left-hand corner. I didn’t want a response to come to the apartment.

  I started checking the mail two days later. Everything, I imagined, was being sped up for me. The postal service had suspended other operations and was concentrating solely on my correspondence.

  Already, after a week, I started to feel foolish. Of course I had the wrong Rebecca Harris.

  In the days that followed, I again thought of confiding in Jenny. But every time I was about to, I changed my mind. The day she came home having lost her rape case, I knew I’d made the right decision. She was upset at herself for having let her client down. She was distracted and testy.

  “It’s not just that I lost. It’s that I went through the motions.”

  “At least it’s over.”

  “What about the next one? The cases are only going to get tougher.”

  “The guy was guilty, Jen. No one could have gotten him off.”

  “That’s no excuse for not doing my best.”

  �
��Besides, he’s violent and dangerous. You don’t want him on the streets.”

  “I can’t think that way. If I start thinking about who I want on the streets, I won’t be able to defend anyone.”

  I tried to comfort her, but I couldn’t.

  After work the next day, I went to the library and looked up Jenny’s name on Lexis and Nexis. She’d been quoted in the newspapers several times in articles about cases she was working on, and received compliments from her clients and other lawyers. “Principled.” “A brilliant young defense attorney.” There had been a feature on her in the San Jose Mercury News, under the title “Head of Her Class.” I made copies of these articles and highlighted what had been said about her, then brought them home and spread them across her desk.

  During Christmas season, Jenny and I got into an argument again. She and Tara were driving to Half Moon Bay to get a tree for our apartment. They invited me along, but I didn’t want to go.

  This was my first Christmas living with them. I’d known they celebrated Christmas; every year, the week after Thanksgiving, they drove to Half Moon Bay to cut their own tree. Why, then, was I surprised? Did I expect this year to be different?

  But it was different. I lived with them. I had nothing against Christmas, as long as I wasn’t involved with it. Now the tree would be in my home.

  Jenny had agreed to have a mezuzah on our doorpost and occasionally to celebrate the sabbath. The least I could do was not object to a Christmas tree.

  But I thought of Christmas trees as bottom-line. I was a history teacher. Judaism was about nothing if not history. That history included centuries of anti-Semitism. The Crusades. The Spanish Inquisition. The Holocaust. These lessons had been hammered into me all my life. To a Jew like me, Christmas was a reminder that I was a stranger in a strange land. It was about being swallowed up.

  Jenny couldn’t understand this.

  “This isn’t about God,” she told me. She and Tara had come home with the tree, which they’d tied like a deer to the roof of Jenny’s car. “Besides, Christmas trees are pagan symbols. They have nothing to do with Christianity.”

  “The Jews had trouble with the pagans too.”

  “The Jews had trouble with everybody. If you gave everyone a hard time who’s descended from an anti-Semite, you wouldn’t have any friends left.”

  “I’m not trying to give you a hard time.”

  “Well, you are.” She’d placed the tree upright and was wiping the sap off her clothes.

  “This isn’t about you, Jen, and it isn’t about individual Christians. It isn’t even about Christianity itself, which is practiced by many people I respect.”

  “Well, then?”

  “It’s about my being involved in this. It’s not my holiday, and I don’t want to pretend it is.”

  “I’m not asking you to pretend it’s your holiday. I’m just asking you to recognize that it’s my holiday.”

  “I do.”

  “And even if I didn’t care about having a tree, Tara does. I won’t deprive her of it. Considering all we’ve done when it comes to Judaism, you’re being a little stingy.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  But I couldn’t get beyond it.

  For the next few weeks, I said nothing more about the tree. Still I resented it, and Jenny noticed. Our conversations were barbed; we snapped at each other.

  One night, I moved the tree to another corner of the room. It was casting shadows across the TV set while I was trying to watch the Golden State Warriors on TNT.

  Jenny came in and glared at me. “How much basketball can a person watch?”

  “If you knew how little basketball I watched compared to a lot of other people . . .”

  “I don’t live with other people. I live with you.”

  “Well, no one’s asking you to watch it.”

  On Christmas Eve, I sat in the living room and didn’t say anything while Jenny and Tara decorated the tree.

  “Stop moping,” Jenny said.

  “I’m not moping.”

  “You certainly are.”

  “What would you like me to do? Get up and dance? Sing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’?”

  “I don’t care what you do. But if you’re going to be the grinch, just leave.”

  “Right now?”

  “Why not? Go off for the evening, and come back when this is over. Everyone will be happier.”

  I left abruptly and slammed the door behind me. I walked to Jonathan and Sandy’s. I’d betrayed Jonathan by writing to Rebecca Harris, and there I was, turning to him for comfort.

  I told him about my argument with Jenny.

  “It’s just a tree,” he said.

  “Come on. It’s a lot more than that. What if Sandy wanted a tree?”

  “But I don’t,” Sandy said.

  “What if you did?” I turned to Jonathan. “Would that be okay with you?”

  “Why not? I can tell you one thing. I wouldn’t make a huge fuss about it.”

  Hearing this saddened me, as if years before we hadn’t spent Christmas Day in a movie theater, watching a series of double features in order to drown out the holiday. Senior year of high school, on Christmas, we’d taken the bus to Atlantic City and sneaked into Bally’s. Christmas: the one day when, according to tradition, Jews were allowed to gamble. In the darkened mirrored hallways of the casino there were so many yarmulkes by the slot machines you might have thought that this was our holiday, that we were there for a Jewish convention.

  “Well, don’t invite me to your Christmas party,” I said.

  “Come on,” said Sandy. “Lighten up.”

  I left their house a little before midnight and thought of going home. But I didn’t want to fight with Jenny. It was better to wait until she’d gone to sleep. Overhead, clouds had settled along Twin Peaks, and as I walked down the hill it started to rain. The slick marks of tires shone beneath the traffic lights. Most of the stores on Market Street were closed. There was no line at the Wells Fargo cash machine. On the corner of Market and Castro, a couple of teenagers were listening to music on a boom box. Aside from them, the neighborhood was quiet.

  I decided to go see Susan. Maybe being with her on Christmas Eve would give me a better sense of the meaning of Christmas, especially since she was religious. That was part of my problem—I was Orthodox at heart. The synagogue I didn’t go to was Orthodox. Despite my own practices, I had an all-or-nothing attitude. Either you were religious or you weren’t. The true Christians, the ones who went to church and believed in God, who were active all year and not just on Christmas, they alone were allowed a Christmas tree. For them Christmas wasn’t a fake holiday. It wasn’t just the windows of Lord & Taylor and the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV specials.

  I walked to Twenty-fourth Street, then turned east. On Valencia, I stopped at a phone booth to call Susan. I let the phone ring several times; she didn’t answer. Maybe she was asleep, or at midnight mass. Maybe she was at home but just wasn’t picking up.

  When I got to her apartment I rang the buzzer. She didn’t come down and let me in. I rang several more times, then sat on her stoop, waiting for her to return.

  The rain had started to fall again, making patterns near my feet and seeping through my sneakers. It was almost one in the morning. I wished I could be many things at once: Susan’s child and my parents’ child, someone who went to synagogue but didn’t mind a Christmas tree in his home.

  A man walked past me holding a bottle of beer. He moved slowly, swaying from side to side. A car drove by. The streetlights were dull, the buildings along Susan’s block formless.

  I sat there until one-thirty, when Susan got home, dropped off by a cab. She was wearing a gray wool skirt and a dark blazer. She was searching for the keys in her pocketbook and didn’t notice me sitting on the stoop.

  “Hi, Susan. Are you coming from church?”

  “God, Ben. You scared me. Yes, I’m coming from church.” She looked at her watch. “It’s one-thirty
in the morning. Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Then why aren’t you home? Where are Jenny and Tara?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “At one-thirty in the morning?”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No, it’s fine. You just surprised me, that’s all.”

  She invited me inside. A small, undecorated Christmas tree stood next to the window in a corner of her living room. The apartment looked sparser than when I’d last seen it. It had a somber air, perhaps because Christmas was supposed to be a family holiday. It was sad to celebrate it alone. On the table in front of the wicker rocking chair sat a solitary copy of the Bible. It reminded me of a motel room.

  “Were you planning to do Bible study?” I asked. I had no idea what people did on Christmas Eve.

  Susan smiled. “It’s almost two in the morning, Ben. I was planning to go to sleep.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll leave.” I got up to go.

  “No.” She raised her hand to stop me. “That wasn’t what I meant. I was just saying you haven’t interrupted anything.”

  I sat down again.

  “I got into a fight with Jenny,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “Christmas. Christmas trees, actually—specifically the one in our apartment. But there’s always more to these fights. It’s really about my willingness to compromise. Jenny thinks that I’m being a prick, and in this case, it’s hard to deny it.”

  “You’re not a prick.”

  “Thank you. But I can see how Jenny would think I am. It comes down to reason—and I think I’m generally a reasonable person—versus principle. What it really comes down to is whether Jenny and I are compatible.”

  “You don’t want a Christmas tree in your apartment?”

  “No.”

  I explained to her that by coming to see her I was hoping to get a better sense of what Christmas was like. “I know. It’s ridiculous. If I truly wanted to get a better sense of Christmas, I should have gone with you to church. What did I expect to find here? Christmas is supposed to be a family holiday, and your family is in Indiana. You probably aren’t happy spending it alone.”