The Sweetness of Forgetting (36 page)

“They talked for a long time, Rose and Jacob, until it began to grow dark,” Alain says. “I was not listening to them very closely, for their conversation bored me. At nine, I wanted to talk about comic books and monsters, but they were talking about politics, and freedom, and religion and America. Finally, I tugged on Rose’s hand again and said, ‘We must go. It is getting dark and Maman and Papa will be angry!’

“Rose nodded, seeming to come out of a dream,” Alain continues. “She told Jacob we had to leave. We began to walk away, quickly, toward the west side of the park, but he called after us. He said, ‘Tomorrow is my birthday, you know! I will be sixteen!’ Rose turned and said, ‘On Christmas Day?’ He said yes, and she paused. She said, ‘Then I will meet you tomorrow, here, at the statue. To celebrate.’ And then, together, we hurried away, both of us aware that darkness was falling fast, and there would be trouble if we were not home.

“She went alone to the park the next day, and she returned
with stars in her eyes,” Alain concludes. “From that moment on, they were inseparable. It was love at first sight.”

I sit back in my seat. “That’s a beautiful story,” I say.

“Everything about Rose and Jacob was a beautiful story,” Alain says. “Until the end. But perhaps the story is not yet through being told.”

I look off into the distance. “
If
he’s still out there.”

“If he is out there,” Alain echoes.

I sigh and close my eyes. “So Christmas Day, then,” I say. “He was born on Christmas Day. Nineteen twenty-four, I guess, if he was turning sixteen in 1940?”

“Correct,” Alain agrees.

“Christmas Day 1924,” I murmur. “Before Hitler. Before the war. Before so many people died for no reason at all.”

“Who could have known,” Alain says softly, “what was to come?”

That night, with Annie at her father’s, Alain and I sip tea in the kitchen, and after he shuffles off to bed, I sit at the table for a long time, watching the second hand on the wall clock go around and around and around. I’m thinking about how time ticks by without anyone being able to stop it. It makes me feel powerless, small. I think about the seemingly infinite number of seconds that have passed since my grandmother lost Jacob.

It’s nearly eleven when I pick up the phone to call Gavin, and although I know it’s inappropriately late, I’m seized with the sudden panicky feeling that if I don’t tell him about Jacob’s birth date now, this very second, it might be too late. It’s a silly thought, of course. Seventy years have ticked by with nothing happening. But seeing Mamie slip away in the hospital day after day makes me acutely conscious of the relentless progress of the second hand.

Gavin answers on the third ring.

“Did I wake you up?” I ask.

“No, I just finished watching a movie,” Gavin says.

I feel suddenly foolish. “Oh. If you’re with someone, I can call back . . .”

He laughs. “I’m by myself, on my couch. Unless you count the remote control as someone.”

I’m unprepared for the feeling of relief that courses through me. I clear my throat, but he speaks again first. “Hope. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah.” I pause and blurt out, “I found out Jacob Levy’s date of birth.”

“That’s great!” Gavin says. “How did you find out?”

I find myself telling him the short version of the story Alain told me earlier.

“What a great story,” Gavin says when I’m done. “Sounds like they were really meant to be.”

“Yeah,” I agree.

A moment of silence passes, and I look up again at the clock.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
The second hand seems to mock me.

“Hope, what’s wrong?” Gavin asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“I could start guessing,” Gavin says. “Or you could just tell me.”

I smile into the phone. He’s so sure that he knows me. The fact of the matter is, he does. “Do you believe in that?” I ask.

“Believe in what?”

“You know,” I mumble. “Love at first sight. Or, you know, soul mates. Or whatever it is that we all keep saying my grandmother and Jacob Levy had.”

Gavin pauses, and in the silence, I feel like an idiot. Why would I ask him something like that? He probably thinks I’m coming on to him. I open my mouth to take it back, but he speaks first.

“Yes,” he says.

“Yes?”

“Yes, I believe in that kind of love. Don’t you?”

I close my eyes. There’s suddenly a pain in my heart, because I realize I don’t. “No,” I say. “No, I don’t think I do.”

“Hmm,” Gavin says.

“Have you ever felt that way about someone?”

He pauses. “Yes.”

I want to ask him who, but I realize I don’t want to know. I feel a small surge of jealousy, which I quickly push away. “Well, that’s nice,” I say.

“Yeah,” Gavin says softly. “Why don’t you believe in it?”

I’ve never asked myself that before. I consider the question for a moment. “Maybe because I’m thirty-six,” I say, “and I’ve never felt it. Wouldn’t I have felt it by now if it was real?”

The words hang between us, and I suspect Gavin is trying to figure out how to answer without offending me. “Not necessarily,” he says carefully. “I think that you’ve been hurt. A lot.”

“In my divorce?” I ask. “But that’s just been recently. What about before that?”

“You’d been with your husband since you were what, twenty-one or twenty-two?”

“Twenty-three,” I murmur.

“Do you think he was the love of your life?”

“No,” I say. “But don’t tell Annie that.”

Gavin laughs softly. “I would never do that, Hope.”

“I know.”

Silence hangs between us again for a moment. “I think that you probably spent a dozen years with a man who didn’t love you like a person deserves to be loved,” Gavin says, “and who you maybe didn’t love the way you’re supposed to love someone. You got used to settling.”

“Maybe,” I say softly.

“And I think that every time a person gets hurt, there’s another layer that forms around the outside of their heart, you know? Like a shield or something. You were hurt a lot, weren’t you?”

I don’t say anything for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says. “Was that too personal?”

“No,” I say. “I think you’re right. It was like nothing I did was ever good enough. Not just with Rob. But with my mom too.” I stop speaking. I’ve never told anyone that before.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says.

“It’s in the past,” I murmur. I’m suddenly uneasy with the conversation, uncomfortable that I’m telling Gavin these things and letting him into my head.

“I’m just saying that I think the more layers there are around your heart, the harder it is to recognize someone you could really fall in love with,” he says slowly.

His words settle in for a moment, and I feel strangely short of breath. “Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe when you’ve been hurt a lot, it just opens your eyes to reality and you stop dreaming of things that don’t exist.”

Gavin is silent. “Maybe,” he says. “But maybe you’re wrong. Maybe it does exist. Would you agree that your grandmother’s been hurt a lot over the years?”

“Of course.”

“And Jacob Levy too, probably?”

“Yeah, probably,” I say. I think of all they both lost—their families, life as they knew it, each other. What could hurt more than the entire world turning its back on you while all the people you love are hauled away to their deaths? “Yeah,” I say again.

“Well, let’s see if we can find him,” Gavin says. “Jacob. And we can ask him. And your grandmother.”

“If she wakes up,” I say.

“
When
she wakes up,” Gavin says. “You have to stay optimistic.”

I look at the clock. How can one stay optimistic when time keeps marching forward? I sigh. “Okay,” I say. “So we’ll just ask them if love is real?” I hate that I sound like I’m mocking him, but he sounds silly.

“Why not?” Gavin answers. “The worst they can say is no.”

“Yeah, all right,” I agree. I shake my head, ready to be done with this futile conversation. “So you think we can find him? Now that we have a birth date?”

“I think it increases our chances,” Gavin says. “Maybe he’s still out there.”

“Maybe,” I agree.
Or maybe he died a long time ago, and this is all a wild goose chase.
“Hey, thank you,” I say, and I’m not sure whether I’m thanking him for the conversation we’ve just had, or whether the thank-you is only for helping us try to find Jacob.

“You’re welcome, Hope. I’ll call a bunch of synagogues tomorrow. Maybe something will turn up. See you tomorrow evening at the hospital.”

“Thank you,” I say again. And then he’s gone, and I’m holding the receiver, wondering what just happened. Is it possible that I’ve just gotten old and bitter and that this guy in his late twenties knows more about life and love than I do?

I fall asleep that night wishing fervently, for the first time I can remember, that I’m just a big fool and that all the things I’ve grown to believe aren’t true after all.

Chapter
Twenty-one

A
nnie and Alain accompany Gavin to temple the next night, while I stay with Mamie past the end of visiting hours, after bribing the nurses on the floor with a lemon-grape cheesecake and a box full of cookies from the bakery.

“Mamie, I need you to wake up,” I whisper to her as the room grows dimmer. I’m holding her hand and facing the window, which is on the other side of her hospital bed. Twilight has almost faded to full darkness now, and Mamie’s beloved stars are out. They seem to sparkle less brightly than they used to, and I wonder whether they’re fading, as I am, without Mamie’s attention. “I miss you,” I whisper close to her ear.

The machines monitoring her continue to beep away in soothing rhythms, but they’re not bringing her back. The doctor has told Alain and me that sometimes, it’s just a matter of time, and that the brain heals itself when it’s ready. What she didn’t say, but what I could read in her eyes, was that just as often, the person never comes back. It’s slowly sinking in that I may never look into my grandmother’s eyes again.

I didn’t think I was a person who needed anyone. My mother was always very independent. And after my grandfather died
when I was ten, Mamie was always busy with the bakery, too busy to tell me her fairy tales anymore, too busy to listen to my stories of school and friends and everything that was going on in my imagination. My mother had never been very interested in those stories anyhow, and gradually, I stopped telling them.

I don’t need anyone,
I told myself as I got older. I didn’t talk to my mother or my grandmother about grades, or boys, or college decisions, or anything. They both seemed so absorbed in their own worlds, and I felt like an outsider with both of them. So I created my own world.

It wasn’t until I had Annie that I learned to let someone else in. And now that she’s right around the age I was when I had to learn to fend for myself, I’ve realized I’m holding on tighter, in a way. I don’t want her drifting out of my universe into one of her own making, like I did. And that, I realize, is what makes me different from my grandmother and my mother.

But as Mamie has regressed through time, turning almost into a child as the Alzheimer’s steals her lifetime, I’ve found her drifting back into my universe too. I realize that I’m not ready for it to just be me and Annie. I need Mamie here a little while longer.

“Come back, Mamie,” I whisper to my grandmother. “We’re going to try to find Jacob, okay? You just have to come back to us.”