Swimming Across the Hudson by Joshua Henkin

Author:Joshua Henkin [Henkin, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Adoption, Jews, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780399141164
Google: i85aAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 284084
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Published: 1997-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

My father had known for almost a year that he was coming to lecture at U.C. Berkeley. But only in the last month had my mother decided to join him. I suspected this had to do with Susan’s arrival. My mother was looking for an excuse to visit.

My parents arrived in San Francisco on a Thursday night. Jonathan was on call, so I greeted them alone at the airport.

“It’s great to be here,” my mother said.

I smiled at her and took her in my arms, pressing her tightly against me.

My father stepped forward and kissed me on the cheek. “You look good, Ben.”

“Thanks, Dad. You do too.”

He ran his fingers through my hair, then kissed me again, this time on the other cheek—two kisses, the way the French did.

My mother wheeled a suitcase across the floor and my father clutched his briefcase. He carried it with him wherever he went. Years before, I’d imagined he purveyed secret information—my father the spy, the carrier of some code, everywhere toting his secrets.

“Dad and I flew together,” my mother said. They’d flown separately when Jonathan and I were children, so that if one of them was killed in a crash the other could take care of us. For years I’d worried that this would happen; I wasn’t sure which parent I hoped would survive.

“The whole thing was silly,” my father said now.

“I was worried about the boys,” said my mother.

“I was too. But if we really were worried, we should have taken separate taxis and flown together. The cab ride’s the most dangerous part of the trip.”

“Everything worked out in the end.”

“That’s true.” I heard contrition in my father’s voice, felt his desire to protect Jonathan and me. We walked quietly through the airport corridors, out to where my car was parked.

The next day, Jonathan took my father on his patient rounds. I had no classes after lunch, so my mother and I visited Jenny at work.

Jenny and my mother traded statistics about the death penalty—specifically about how it was racially biased. If the murder victim was white, Jenny said, the suspect was more likely to be sentenced to death. All else being equal, black defendants received the death penalty at higher rates than whites did.

“I know,” my mother said. “You don’t even have to worry about the Eighth Amendment. It’s a problem already with the Fourteenth Amendment.” Their interaction was so casual a stranger might have thought I was the boyfriend and they were mother and daughter.

As if further to establish her authority, my mother gave a breakdown of Supreme Court opinions. Only Justices Brennan and Marshall, she said, considered the death penalty a violation of the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, although Justice Blackmun, over time, had come to oppose it on due-process grounds. “But Marshall’s dead, and Brennan and Blackmun are gone from the Court. Which doesn’t leave the country in a very good position.”

Jenny showed my mother her office, which she shared with another public defender. Next to Jenny’s computer were two photographs, one of Tara and one of me.

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