Swimming across the Hudson

by Joshua Henkin

As a child, Ben Suskind wonders how his family came together. What if he hadn't been adopted by Jews, what if his brother, Jonathan, had been adopted by a different couple? He and Jonathan fantasize about being the secret sons of Sandy Koufax, of coming to earth in a spaceship. They make blood pacts and switch names. But while they imagine other identities, they search for ways to feel that they belong to each other, to their parents, to their home. As adolescents, even in the familiar and happy comfort of the Manhattan apartment where they live, their dreams of girls and rock stars are colored by these concerns. Now Ben Suskind is thirty years old, living in San Francisco with his girlfriend, Jenny, and her daughter. He still reflects on the questions of his youth; Jenny often has to pull his head out of the clouds. So when he receives a letter from a woman claiming to be his birth mother, he is unprepared, panicked, but curious. He tells his adoptive parents about the letter, and the