Swimming Across the Hudson by Joshua Henkin Page B

her letter arrived, my birth mother called. She was flying to San Francisco the following afternoon and wanted to meet me the day after that for lunch.
    Perhaps she, like my parents, would spring news upon me. You’ve inherited a terrible disease. You’ve been bequeathed ten million dollars. I saw myself at lunch with her, still numb, thinking: You’re thirty years old, and you’re meeting your birth mother for the first time. What are you feeling right now?
    I didn’t feel anything.
    Two days later, I waited for her at an Ethiopian restaurant on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. I loved Ethiopian food, this restaurant especially. I wanted to show her my good taste. This is my town, this is my restaurant, as if I myself had cooked the food.
    But now I wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice. She lived in Indiana. Perhaps a hamburger would have been better. Briefly, on the phone, I’d asked her what she looked like so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself in the restaurant, moving from patron to patron, asking every woman whether she was related to me. But my birth mother hadn’t been specific. She looked average, she said. I’d seen a magazine cover with a picture of the “Average American” on it. It was a computer composite of various races, weights, and body types. Maybe that was my birth mother, a goulash of strange people come to find me.
    She’d asked on the phone if I would pick her up at the airport,but I’d refused. I would see her, I said, though not at an airport, a place constructed for reunions. Maybe she would try to hug me. I didn’t want her to, and I didn’t want her not to.
    At work the day before, I’d kept glancing at my watch, waiting for the time her plane would arrive. While lecturing on Jim Crow, I tossed my chalk from hand to hand; I found myself looking out the window. She seemed to be everywhere now that she’d arrived. I almost expected her to land outside school and get off the plane and greet me.
    I thought of her as a homeless woman, pushing a shopping cart off the airplane, showing up at the apartment with her bric-a-brac. In the morning I’d wake up and find her stuff on our floor—magazines, chewing gum, old packets of tissues. She’d comb through our fridge for leftover food, leaving cellophane wrappers crumpled on the counter.
    A woman walked toward me in the restaurant. The black leather pocketbook slung over her shoulder thumped against her side. “Ben,” she said, and stuck out her hand. “Susan Green.” She was smaller than I’d imagined, almost a foot shorter than I was. She had a wide symmetrical face, while mine was longer and narrower, and pale green eyes, while mine were blue. Her skin was darker than mine, but we both had sandy hair. Her nose was straight like my nose; her nostrils were evenly parted. But what I noticed most was how young she seemed. She looked like a Catholic schoolgirl.
    â€œHello, Mrs. Green.” She wore a navy blazer and a gray wool skirt; around her neck was a string of pearls. In each earlobe was a tiny gold stud in the shape of a star; I smelled perfume on her. Her hands were small but muscular. I was struck by the strength of her grip, and by the ease with which she held herself. I’d been expecting someone more retiring.
    â€œYou recognized me,” I said.
    And she said, not unkindly, “Mother’s intuition.”
    She looked around the restaurant. I’d been right to second-guessmyself. She seemed unsure about the place, glancing up and down the aisles. Then I saw what was bothering her. The patrons were eating on the floor.
    â€œWe can sit on chairs if you want.”
    She seemed slightly embarrassed. “It’s Ethiopian food, right?”
    â€œDon’t you like it?”
    â€œI’ve never had it.” She reached into her pocketbook and took out a tissue, then rubbed it gently across her lips as though she were