Swimming Across the Hudson (28 page)

“Why?”

“Mom, you guys have been together for almost three years. How long were you going to just hang out?”

“Well, aren't you going to congratulate us?”

“Congratulations.” Tara kissed Jenny, then me, on the cheek. She didn't sound enthusiastic, but it was unhip at her age to show any feelings about us other than amused embarrassment. I'd become part of the family. I could tell she was happy for us both. I think she was happy for herself also.

“Now will you finally let me go to boarding school?”

Jenny shook her head. “Ben and I need you around here. We'd be lonely without you.”

Telling my parents, especially my father, was going to be more difficult. I called them to say Jenny and I were coming to New York and needed to talk to them.

“What's wrong?” my mother asked.

“Nothing. We just have something to tell you.”

“We can play handball,” my father said.

“Come on, Dad.”

“Why not? I ride the stationary bike six days a week. I'm not so old.”

I thought of him grading his blue books, a seventy-five-year-old man who still taught class, who came home at night and marked his papers, hunched over his desk now as always, the elbows of his jacket patched with suede, my father penciling in letters in the blue-book margins in secret Hebrew code.

 

W
e left Tara with a friend and flew to New York. When we got to my parents' apartment, my mother had lamb chops on the counter, ready to be broiled. Lamb chops used to be my favorite food, what I'd chosen every year for my birthday dinner. Sometimes my mother would call me “lamb chop” as she stroked my forehead before I went to sleep. She'd sit next to my father on the edge of the bed while he placed his hand like a yarmulke on my head and listened to me say the
shma
.

My mother and Jenny sliced radishes for the salad. I sat on the stool where I'd eaten breakfast as a child and listened to the sound of their knives against the cutting board. I thought maybe this wouldn't be as hard as I'd feared; maybe it wouldn't be so painful.

Jenny went to lie down before dinner. I set four places at the dining room table, then came back into the kitchen. My mother was making rice pilaf.

“I like Jenny,” she said. “I hope you realize that.”

“Thanks, Mom. I appreciate your saying it.”

“Dad does too.”

“I'm glad.”

“Whatever you think about what we think, I hope you know we have nothing against her.”

She seemed to understand why we were here, and was preparing for our announcement. Her hands fluttered like sparrows above the
stove. She'd lost weight, I thought. For a moment I saw her like the skulls behind the window in my high school biology lab, becoming teeth and bone: my mother growing old on the heels of my father, osteoporitic and arthritic, with the cautious gait of the old women in Riverside Park careful not to slip on the ice.

“I know why you're here,” my mother said.

I could tell she did. But I didn't want to talk about it. “Please, Mom, let's wait until Dad comes home.”

She stirred the pilaf with a wooden spoon, her right hand moving in concentric circles, one after the other, wider and wider. Her hair hung in wisps above her eyes; a few strands were stuck to her forehead.

“I want to say something now,” she said, “because when Dad is here it will be harder for me to say it.”

“Okay.”

“When you were small, I always told you that when you grew up, you and Jonathan could live as you wanted.”

“We have.”

“I know. Let me finish. I meant it then and I mean it now. But there was a time when I truly believed it wouldn't matter. I thought that as long as you were happy, one thing would be as good as the next.”

“But it isn't?”

“It turns out to be more complicated. I know what you're thinking.” She pointed at the adjoining sinks, one for milk and one for meat, then at the cabinet that held the sabbath candles and the unopened bottles of kiddush wine. “You wonder why this matters to me. You know how I grew up. God for me was ‘The International.' I never thought I'd care about the Jewish laws.”

“But?”

“But I've grown to.” She untied her apron and set it down on the counter. It had “This Kitchen Is Kosher” written on it. Jonathan and I had bought it for her fortieth birthday. “In a way I still think
these laws are archaic, and I don't believe in God. But over the years I've come to care about these things.”

A pigeon walked along the window ledge. My mother hated the sounds pigeons made. During sabbath lunch she used to rap her slipper against the window and shoo them away. She looked down at the street. She had an intent expression on her face, as if something were staring back at her, some answer to a question she was trying to ask. “More than half my life I've been married to Dad. That's a lot of sabbaths together. Every time I cook a meal in this kitchen I'm aware of the kosher laws. He and I disagree about many things. But I've come to understand that Judaism is about continuity. Most religions are. By marrying Jenny—”

“Please, Mom. Don't try to preempt us.”

“I'm not. I just want to explain what I'm feeling, and I want to do it now while I've got the chance. This is hard for Dad. I'm speaking for him because, although it's hard for me too, it's not as hard. And I don't think he'll be able to tell you this himself. This has nothing to do with Jenny. Both of us respect and admire her. We more than understand why you've fallen in love. I'm sorry we haven't welcomed her as much as you'd have liked—surely not as much as we should have. But that will change—from my side, I promise. From Dad's side too, I think, if you're patient enough.”

I wouldn't have expected any different from her. She was my mother. I wanted to tell her I hadn't planned it this way; I'd have done anything not to disappoint her and my father. I wanted to tell her I still dreamed about them, my parents who had loved Jonathan and me and taken us in, who thought about us now, three thousand miles away, and still saw the babies they'd adopted.

We sat down to dinner when my father got home. My mother placed two lamb chops on everybody's plate and ladled portions of
rice pilaf. In the living room the lamps were lit, casting shadows along the grand piano. I could see across the water, to where Palisades Amusement Park had once been. At night, Jonathan and I used to watch the roller coaster, the climb and dip of lights, a flash of color and then darkness.

Jenny sat across from me in Jonathan's old seat. My father sat opposite my mother. He was on the antique chair; it had lasted for twenty-eight years. Once when Jonathan and I were taking turns sitting on it, we accidentally chipped a piece off one arm. We woke up at three in the morning and secretly, fearfully, Krazy Glued the wood back together.

My father raised his wineglass in toast. “To seeing you, Ben.”

“To seeing Jenny too,” my mother said.

My father's shirtsleeves were rolled up. He was almost completely bald, and what hair he had was as white as the inside of a coconut. But the hair along his arms was still dark. I'd stroked those arms when I was a child, asking him to make a muscle for me, then feeling my own muscle. I'd asked him how much he weighed when he was my age, how tall he'd been at ten, how old he was when he started shaving. I wanted to know what to expect from my life; I was waiting to see what would happen. Jonathan and I: the only kids in the fourth grade who knew the meaning of the word
hirsute
. I used to wonder what my father's students thought about him, whether they compared themselves with him the way I did, whether in him they saw the unfolding of their world.

“I'm glad we're here,” Jenny said.

“We're glad you're here too,” said my mother.

“We have some news for you,” Jenny said. We hadn't planned how we'd make the announcement. I assumed I'd tell my parents at dinner. But I realized now that Jenny was telling them. “Ben and I are getting married.”

“Congratulations!” my mother said. She jumped out of her chair.
Her enthusiasm was so high-pitched it seemed almost willed. She hugged Jenny hard. Then she hugged me.

My father was quiet momentarily. His hands were so still on the table you might not have known he was alive. I'd seen movies in high school about fathers who said kaddish for their intermarried children. My father wouldn't do that. He was a reasonable man. But I wanted him to be happy for me, to be like the father I'd imagined he'd be on the day I told him I was getting married.

“Ben,” he said. I thought he was going to remind me about the Millsteins. I could have sworn he started to say their name. “Congratulations.”

But he wasn't happy. I wished this didn't hurt me so. He came over and kissed me on the forehead. He kissed Jenny on the forehead too. He laid his hands on Jenny's head and left them there for several seconds. In that moment, I allowed myself to believe he was blessing her. For that was how he'd looked blessing Jonathan and me on Friday nights, a time when I believed my father spoke to God, when anything he said he could make happen.

 

F
or our wedding, Jenny and I considered going to a justice of the peace, accompanied only by Tara. But we wanted the rest of our families to be there.

We planned a small wedding at Tilden Park, followed by lunch at Green's restaurant in Fort Mason.

“We're only inviting immediate family,” I told my parents.

“And Susan, I assume,” my mother said.

My mother might have liked a slightly larger wedding so that she could invite a few friends. But my father was content with something small. I suspect he would have preferred that Jenny and I elope—actually being at the ceremony would prove painful to him—although once we decided to have guests, he never considered refusing to come. We planned no Jewish content for the wedding, in part out of deference to him, but also because I wanted it that way. A Jewish wedding, I believe, takes place between two Jews. This may still be the Orthodoxy in me, but the God I knew as a child, whether or not He exists, wouldn't have wanted to be involved in this wedding, and I had no desire to involve Him.

My parents flew out two days before the wedding to meet Susan. I'd known this day would come, yet knowing it didn't make me any less nervous. I'd once had a fantasy about their meeting that amounted to a huge and joyous reunion, but I was long past wishing that would happen. I simply wanted them to get along.

I took Susan to my parents' hotel. I saw myself as a boxing referee, bringing the fighters to the center of the ring and demanding that they shake hands. But there was no hostility between them. Why should there have been? There was only the expected nervousness, no one sure what to do.

“Mom and Dad,” I said when my parents came down to the lobby, “this is Susan Green.” Then, as if anyone needed reminding, I said, “This is my birth mother.”

My father shook Susan's hand. “I'm pleased to meet you again.”

“I am too,” said Susan.

“We're happy you'll be joining us at the wedding,” my mother told her.

“I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

I wasn't worried about my father. But Susan can be voluble when she gets nervous, and my mother, when threatened, can turn snobbish and make such an occasion unpleasant. Having Susan find me was hard for both my parents, but I've come to realize that it was more difficult for my mother simply because Susan was also my mother and therefore in direct competition with her.

“I'm glad Ben's getting married,” Susan said. “Jenny's terrific.”

“Yes, she is,” my father said. “Ben's mother and I are both very fond of her.”

“We love her,” said my mother. My parents seemed to be trying to outdo Susan with their declarations of affection for their new daughter-in-law.

Suddenly Susan said, “Ben looks like you.”

“Like who?” said my mother.

“You.”

My mother seemed unsure whether Susan was making fun of her.

“I mean it,” Susan said. “These things probably happen over time. You begin to look like the people you live with.”

My mother's not one to be easily flattered, but in these circumstances she was.

“You clearly were good parents,” Susan said. “No one turns out like Ben because of good luck.”

My mother reached out as if to touch Susan's hand, then thought better of it and pulled back.

“He had good genes too,” my father said. “That counts for a lot.”

Susan smiled in gratitude. Everyone was being polite to the point of exaggeration.
He's wonderful because of you. . . . No, because of you
.

My father said, “Ben probably told you that we lied to him about his having been born Jewish.”

“Yes,” Susan answered.

“Well, it was a mistake, and we regret it. I just want you to know we didn't do it out of hostility to you or your religion.”