Authors: Jean Stone
“So he was a hippie. Did he, like, burn his draft card or anything?”
“Mark, I loved David very much.”
Mark was silent.
“I was twenty-one. And I …” She sucked in as much air as possible. “I got pregnant.”
Mark squirmed in his chair. “What’s this got to do with me?”
“I had the baby, Mark. I gave it up for adoption.”
His eyes shifted from her to the floor. He brought a hand to his mouth and began chewing a cuticle. Slowly he started to nod, then spit out a piece of skin. It was a habit Susan detested.
“How come you didn’t keep it?”
“I wasn’t married.”
“Hippies didn’t get married?”
Susan shook her head. “That’s not important now. What’s important is a lady came by yesterday whom I knew back then. She wants to plan a reunion. She wants me to meet the child.”
Mark stared at Susan.
“I don’t know if I’m going to or not. I’d like your input.”
“Me? What do you care how I feel about anything?” The crack in his voice warned Susan he was trying not to cry. She hadn’t seen him cry since the day she’d packed him into the car and left Manhattan, and her husband, behind.
Mark had been four years old and didn’t understand why Daddy wouldn’t come down from the penthouse to say good-bye. Now, a dozen years later, he seemed like that same confused little boy.
“Mark …”
“Sorry, Mom, but I call it like I see it. You hate my father; you hate my friends. Now you spring this on me.”
“I’m not trying to ‘spring’ anything on you. I’m trying to include you in my decision.”
Mark chewed another cuticle.
How was she supposed to get through to him? “I love you, Mark. You know that. As for your father, the way I do or don’t feel about him doesn’t make me love you any less. I married him because I thought it was the right thing to do. I’d been through an awful time, having the baby, then giving it up. I was confused and scared.”
“You? Scared? Come on, Mom, get real.”
“I
was
scared. Your father represented everything I thought must be ‘right.’ He was safe, he was …” Susan searched for the right word. “He was ‘establishment.’ ”
“ ‘Establishment.’ Crap.”
“Mark …”
“Sorry, Mom, but it is crap. This is the nineties, for godsake, not the sixties. So you loved some hippie freak and he got you pregnant. Maybe that’s been the problem all along. That you’ve never stopped comparing Dad to him. Maybe you’ve never stopped comparing me to some kid who’s probably a juvenile delinquent or on drugs or something.”
“I’ve never compared …”
“Haven’t you?” he cried. “Maybe that’s why Dad let us go. Well, go ahead, dig out your love beads and have your little reunion. Have fun! I’ve been thinking of going to live with Dad anyway. Vermont sucks. I’d be better off in New York.” He got up from the kitchen table and fled to his room.
Susan stared at the top of the old oak table, remembering the day she’d found it at a nearby flea market. She and Mark had just moved into the cottage in Vermont, which
was conveniently situated across campus from Clarksbury College, where she was starting as an associate English professor. At last released from her mismatched marriage, Susan’s hopes for the future had been high. But somewhere throughout the years she had settled into a mundane existence, where time was defined by the beginnings and ends of semesters, and dreams of happiness had become tempered by reality. She had tried to give Mark a good life, but she knew that she had been defeated years ago: not on the day she’d left her husband, but long before that—on the day she’d left David.
Mark came back into the kitchen and tossed his jacket on a chair. Could she ever expect him to understand?
“Mark …”
“I’m sick of this town and your college-professor buddies,” he snapped. “They’re nerds, Mom, and so are you. Don’t expect me to get totally wired over recycling newspapers, or about how many bugs we have in our water.” He grabbed his Air Jordans and stuffed his feet into them. He tugged sharply at the laces, refusing to make eye contact with his mother. Susan was continually struck by the similarities between Mark and his father—the quick temper, the emotional immaturity. She had divorced Lawrence, but she couldn’t divorce their son. And she wouldn’t stop hoping that someday Mark would emerge as a compassionate adult.
“Mark, sit down.”
“I’m going out.” He yanked his jacket off the chair and headed for the door. He stopped and shot a glare back at Susan. “One more thing, Mom. You didn’t tell me if this kid was a boy or a girl.”
Susan looked at the floor. “A boy,” she said.
“It figures,” he said, and slammed out the door.
Bert had suggested they meet at the quad. Susan had called him after Mark stormed off, and good old dependable Bert was, of course, at her beck and call. He had said “noon—by the fountain,” but Susan arrived ten minutes early, welcoming the time alone.
She sat on a bench, her old corduroy blazer pulled close against her. Although it was only the beginning of September, there was already a chill in the air. Susan shivered and hoped this didn’t mean an early winter. Winters in Vermont could be so long, so lonely.
She looked at the mossy bottom of the fountain. When Susan had first come to Clarksbury, kids were still making wishes here, tossing in coins. Nineteen Eighty-one. Mark had been four. Her other son had been thirteen. When had the world changed again? The Reagan years became so materialistic; it seemed that everyone became completely self-centered. Too self-centered even to throw a few coins in a fountain and buy a few moments’ worth of dreams. People were doing, not dreaming. And kids were interested only in an education that promised a high-paying career as its reward.
Susan dug into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out two coins. A nickel. A dime. “I wish I could make the right decision,” she whispered to herself, and tossed in the nickel. “I wish my son will want to meet me,” she said, then tossed in the dime. She watched the rings of tiny ripples grow larger until they disappeared beneath the greenish water. Is that what I really wish? she wondered. Do I really want to meet him?
“Penny for your thoughts, lady.” It was Bert’s voice, behind her.
“Haven’t you heard of inflation?” she asked.
He wheeled around the bench and thrust a bunch of maroon mums at her. “Flowers for my lady,” he said.
“Where’d you steal them?”
“Front of the Dean’s Office.”
Susan laughed and took the scraggly bunch. “At least they’re not from Gardiner’s house.”
Bert scratched his beard. “Shit,” he said. “I didn’t think of that.” He sat beside her. “So how’re you doin’?”
Susan had told him on the phone of Jess’s visit, and of Mark’s reaction. “I guess as badly as I might want it in my fantasies, I’ve got to leave it alone.”
“You’re saying you’re not going to the reunion?”
“Right.”
“Because of Mark?”
“Because of Mark.”
Bert nodded and looked into the fountain. “That kid’s really got you wrapped around his little finger, doesn’t he?”
Susan felt her anger rise. “What are you talking about?”
Bert shrugged. “I think if you want to meet this other boy, you should. You asked for Mark’s support; he’s obviously not going to give it to you. But this is your decision. Mark won’t be with you many more years. This is your life, Susan. You’ve got another human being involved here too.”
“You’re saying what if my son shows up at the reunion and I don’t?”
“Exactly.”
Susan plucked a few petals off the mums and tossed them on the ground. “I resent being forced into doing anything. Especially something of this magnitude.”
“Would it be better if the kid just showed up at your door someday, unannounced?”
She plucked more petals.
“It could happen, Susan. You’ve probably always known that. It seems to me it would be better—for both of you—if you went. That way, if he’s not interested in meeting you, it’s his choice not to go.”
“What do I do if he does show up? What do I say to him?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“You’re so great on advice when it comes to family matters. Amazing. You, who are forty-eight years old and never had the guts to have one yourself.” She regretted her words as soon as she’d said them. Bert was too kind for Susan to treat like that. “I’m sorry,” she added quickly. “That wasn’t fair.”
“No. It wasn’t.”
“Did you bring any grass?”
“No. Want me to get some?”
“No.” She plucked at the blossomless stems. Her fingers had turned sticky and putrid. “I want to do the right thing. That’s why I talked to Mark first.”
“And that was the right thing.”
“But how can I go now? Knowing how he feels? He’ll take off for New York. He’s already threatened that.”
“He won’t do that. He loves you, Susan.”
She laughed without humor. “I doubt it.”
“Besides,” Bert continued, “he can’t stand Deborah.”
“Lawrence’s wife?”
Bert nodded.
“How do you know?”
“He told me once. He said she’s pushy, and she doesn’t like having him around.”
“He never told me.”
“Of course he didn’t. He doesn’t want to give you any more ammunition against his father.”
Susan half smiled at the thought of Lawrence’s wife as a bitch. But then her smile vanished. She didn’t like the idea that the woman was being cruel to Mark.
Bert returned to the subject. “I really think you’ve got to separate yourself from Mark on this. I think you’ve got to decide how you feel about meeting the boy and resolve what you’re going to do based on those feelings, and those alone.”
She tossed the remnant stems into the fountain. “I don’t know how I feel.”
They sat in silence.
“Do you want to tell me the rest?” Bert finally asked.
“The rest of what?”
“Why are you so afraid to meet him?”
“Afraid? I’m not afraid.”
Bert didn’t answer.
“Why would I be afraid?” Susan was aware her voice had gone up an octave.
“You’ve never told me about his father.”
The ache was back. It swelled in her stomach like a mass of knotted sponge. She wished she hadn’t thrown the
flowers down. She needed something to hold on to. Susan stood and walked closer to the fountain.
“Were you in love with him?”
She nodded. She would have spoken, but she wasn’t sure the words would come out.
“Did he leave you? Is that why you were in the home for unwed mothers?”
She shook her head. “He never knew,” she managed to say. “I never told him.” She walked around the fountain until she came back to Bert. “During the Gulf War, every day I was afraid my son was there. My son. David’s son. I was afraid. And yet I knew there was no way I could have ever known.”
“Is that why you were glued to CNN the whole time?”
Bert was right. She had been glued to the TV. Between classes she’d planted herself in an orange plastic chair in the teachers’ lounge; at home she’d eaten dinner in front of the set and turned it on again in the morning before she’d even showered.
“Even that seems a lifetime ago. God, it’s been almost three years.”
“I cared about you then too, you know,”
She sat beside him again. “I was worried about Israel,” she said. “My heritage, in case you forgot.”
“That’s what you said at the time.”
She laughed and turned her head from Bert. “It was so odd. I guess I thought I’d see my son. I guess I thought I’d know him right away.” She looked at the ground. “I guess I thought he’d look like David.”
“In an army uniform?”
Susan smiled. “David and I were against the war in Vietnam. We were protesters.”
“You weren’t in Washington in ’67 were you? The big peace march?”
“We were there.”
Bert laughed. “Funny. I don’t remember seeing you.”
Susan couldn’t respond to his attempt at lightheartedness. “When I found out I was pregnant, I left David. I
wasn’t into marriage. But I know now that I was all twisted up with my ‘socially right’ upbringing.”
“And you never saw him again?”
“No.” She did not, could not, tell Bert the rest. That David had joined the army. That he became one of the forgotten MIAs of Vietnam. She didn’t tell Bert not because of what he might say; it was simply that she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“And you never stopped loving him.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I suppose not. Oh,” she said, tossing back her hair, “there have been different periods of my life when I haven’t thought of him as often. Like when Lawrence and I were first married, and I put all my energy into trying to be a good Jewish wife.”
Bert laughed. “God, I would’ve loved to have seen that.”
“Or when I first came to Clarksbury,” she continued, “determined to be independent, and good at my job.”
“But the other times?”
“Oh, yeah. Those. Well, I guess David will always have a very special place in my heart. First love, and all that. Over the years I’ve worked very hard to keep that in perspective.”
“Is everything you do based on logic?”
Susan scowled. “What do you mean?”
“God, Susan, haven’t you ever followed your heart? Your own emotions?”
She thought for a moment. “Sure. When I left Lawrence.”
“That was different. You had no choice. You were drying up. What I meant was, haven’t you ever just let yourself love?”
She kicked at the limp petals on the ground. “Once,” she said. “Only once.”
At lunchtime Susan made pizza with extra cheese—Mark’s favorite food. He was subdued, but he ate. He did not
mention their morning argument. Maybe he just needs time, she thought. Maybe we both do.
“So what’s on your agenda for the rest of the day?” Susan asked him as he plucked a piece of pepperoni from the pizza and plopped it into his mouth.
“Nothin’.”
“Any homework?” she asked. “It’s hard to believe you’re a junior.”
“No homework.”
“Are you sorry you missed the first few days?”
“Naw. Nothin’ ever happens then anyway. Besides, I like being at Grandma and Grandpa’s.”
“They liked having you. You mean a lot to them.”
“Yeah.”
“More pizza?”