Young Jane Young

by Gabrielle Zevin

  I wasn’t sure if I wanted my husband’s mistress to give me chicken soup, but I felt so run-down all at once. Her apartment was small but comfortable and clean. I wondered how long she had lived there. I imagined her getting ready to go on dates with my husband. Putting on lipstick for him. Tarting herself up. I imagined her young, waiting for Aviva to grow up so that Mike would divorce me. I felt sad for all of us.

  She brought the soup in a pretty blue imitation delft bowl.

  I ate the soup, and I immediately began to feel better. My sinuses cleared and my throat felt less raw.

  “See,” she said, “it’s not just an old wives’ tale about chicken soup.”

  “I hate that phrase,” I said. “Old wives’ tale.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, it’s not you. But it’s so hateful and sexist and ageist when you think about it. ‘Old wives’ tale’ means something that’s untrue or not scientifically proven? ‘Old wives’ tale’ is basically a way of saying ignore everything that dumb old woman says.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she said.

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way either. Not until I became an old wife myself.”

  THREE MONTHS LATER, terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center, and just like that, Avivagate was over. People stopped talking about the scandal. The news cycle moved on.

  That winter, Aviva finished college. She received her diploma in a windowless office at the university.

  That spring, she applied for jobs. She wanted to continue working in government or politics, but in South Florida, everyone had heard of her and not in a way that was helpful. Anyone who hadn’t heard of her googled her, and that was that. She switched her focus to finding work in PR or marketing, thinking that these employers would be less—I suppose the word is moralistic—than public sector employers. They were not. I will admit, I have more sympathy for her situation now than I did then. At the time, what I wanted was for her to move out, move on, get her life together.

  By the end of the summer, she’d given up. I’d always find her floating in our pool, letting her skin bake to a deep brown.

  “Aviva,” I said. “Are you even wearing SPF?”

  “No, Mom. It’s fine.”

  “Aviva, you’ll damage your skin.”

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “You should care!” I said. “You only get one skin.”

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  She was working her way through the Harry Potter books. I think there were four out at the time, but I don’t remember. I know that adults read Harry Potter, but I took it as a bad sign. They looked so childish to me, with the drawing of the cartoon boy wizard on the front.

  “Aviva,” I said, “you like to read so much. Maybe you should apply to grad school?”

  “Oh yeah?” she said. “Who’s going to write me recommendation letters? What school isn’t going to web search me?”

  “Well, you could apply to law school. Plenty of people from dubious backgrounds go to law school. I saw a show where a convicted murderer did law school by correspondence so that he could try to get himself acquitted.”

  “I’m not a murderer,” she said. “I’m a slut, and you can’t be acquitted of that.”

  “You can’t stay in this pool forever.”

  “I’m not going to stay in this pool forever. I’m going to float on top of it, and I’m going to finish reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for the fourth time, and then I’m going to take a shower, and then I’m going to read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the fourth time.”

  “Aviva,” I said.

  “How’s your job search coming, Mom?” Aviva said.

  It is awful what I did.

  It is awful.

  I had never raised a hand to that girl. I walked into the pool, my belted summer-weight cashmere cardigan getting wet and billowing around me. I pulled the floating mat out from under her. Harry Potter fell in the pool and so did Aviva.

  “Mom!” she screamed.

  “GET OUT OF THE GODDAMN POOL!” I yelled.

  Harry Potter sank to the bottom of the pool. She scrambled to get back on the floating mat, and I pulled it out from under her again.

  “Mom! Stop being such a bitch!”

  I slapped her across the face.

  Aviva’s expression was hard, but then her nose turned red and she wept.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was sorry. I tried to put my arms around her. She was resistant at first, but then she let me.

  “Sometimes I feel crazy, Mommy,” she said. “He did love me, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think he probably did.”

  In retrospect, I would say she was depressed.

  I WENT TO my mother and I asked for advice.

  “You’ve been too much of a friend to her and not enough of a mother,” Mom said.

  “Okay,” I said. “How do I stop doing that?”

  “You have to tell her to move out,” she said.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “She is shunned. She has no money, no job. What will she live on?”

  “She is able-bodied and smart. She will figure something out, I assure you.”

  I couldn’t do that to Aviva.

  “And stop worrying about Aviva,” Mom said. “Try worrying about your own life. There are things to figure out there, I assure you, my daughter.”

  But a few months later, Aviva did move away.

  She did not consult me; she did not leave a forwarding address. I have a cell phone number. She calls me once or twice a year. I believe I have a grandchild. Yes, I would call this a sadness in my life.

  How can I blame her for leaving? There was nothing for her in South Florida. These people feel as Louis the bad date felt. They know a few punch lines. They don’t think they are talking about a human being. They don’t think they are talking about someone’s daughter.

  Mike and I divorced a few months after Aviva left. I would not say we had stayed together for Aviva, but in the absence of Aviva, I felt no particular connection to him. We were Aviva’s parents. I will tell you, it was no tragedy to return to my maiden name.

  I run into Mike every now and again. He is remarried. Not, I might add, to the mistress. That poor woman waited and waited, only to have him marry someone else. I almost feel more outraged for her than I do for myself. The new wife—what can I say about her? She is younger than me but older than my daughter, thank God.

  Should I tell you about Levin? He’s still in Congress. I think he’s managed to keep his schlong out of other people’s daughters. What a mensch.

  Eleven

  A month before Mom’s eighty-fifth birthday, the nursing home calls me. Mom is being transferred to the hospital. She has pneumonia, and she may not live through the night.

  I dial Aviva’s cell phone number. She never picks up, but I dial it anyway. The robot voice recites her number.

  “It’s Mom,” I say. “If you want to see Grandma before she dies, you may want to get on a plane to South Florida. Give me a call.”

  I sit in the lobby and wait for her to call me back. I fall asleep and when I wake up, Mimmy is sitting next to me.

  “Good news!” she says. “We can have the birthday party at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. The people who were using the garden for the wedding canceled!”

  I say, “Mimmy, are you kidding me? Mom is on life support. Mom will probably die.”

  “She’ll pull through,” Mimmy says. “She always does.”

  “No, Mimmy,” I say. “She may not pull through. She is eighty-four years old. One of these days, she is definitely not going to pull through.”

  “You’re a hard one, Rachel Shapiro,” Mimmy says.

  “If you mean I’m a realist, then yes, I guess I am a ‘hard one,’ ” I say.

  “Anticipating the worst doesn’t provide insurance from the worst happening,” Mimmy says.

  The crazy thing
is, Mimmy turns out to be right. Mom does pull through, and we have the party at the Boca Raton Museum of Art. Mom seems delighted as a five-year-old that we are having an eighty-fifth birthday party for her.

  “Museum,” she says.

  “Art,” she says.

  “Wonderful,” she says.

  “Rachel,” she says.

  “Aviva,” she says.

  I think that is what she says.

  I’ve put Mom in the van back to the rehab and I’m on the way to my car when someone calls my name. It’s Louis the bad date. He’s visiting the museum with his grown son and daughter-in-law.

  “Rachel Shapiro,” he says. “I have been so hoping I’d run into you. I want you to know: I would never have said it, if I’d thought that Aviva was your Aviva.”

  “You finally figured it out,” I say.

  “I didn’t,” he says. “I’m a dunce. I was at the synagogue for the Torah unrolling ceremony, and Roz Horowitz was there, and it came up that she was your good friend, so I asked if she knew what had happened, and she told me.”

  “Roz and I aren’t good friends anymore,” I say.

  “Meh, I doubt that,” he says. “Friendships ebb and flow.”

  “Roz was at the synagogue?”

  “She’s not doing so great,” he says. “Her husband died.”

  “The glass guy died!” I say.

  “A heart attack,” he says.

  “Poor Roz,” I say. “I’ll have to give her a call.”

  He says, “When I like someone, I get nervous and I talk too much. I was showing off for you, trying to be funny and smart, and I’m sorry, it backfired. I know I come off as gregarious, but I’m a bit shy actually.”

  I don’t care.

  “Obviously,” he says, “I don’t know your daughter. I know what the story on TV was, but I don’t know her. And it’s bad luck, plain and simple, that we hit upon that subject.”

  “It’s not bad luck,” I say. “You asked me about my children.”

  He can’t argue with that.

  And then I say, “What if Aviva weren’t my daughter? Should you talk about anyone’s daughter that way? Levin was an adult man and an elected public official, and my daughter was a dumb kid in love, and he ended up fine, and she’s a punch line. So, fifteen years later, why should she have to be some alte cocker’s dating banter?”

  “I am sorry,” he says. “I know I stuck my foot in it. I wish I could go back in time and rewind the tape of our date.”

  “There aren’t tapes anymore, Louis. Just zeros and ones, and they never disappear.”

  “You’re smart and you’ve got moxie,” Louis says. “I like a woman with moxie. At our age, can we afford not to try again? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to give this another shot?”

  “I have been alone a long time,” I say. “I am fine with continuing to be alone.”

  “Even so,” he says. “I think we can be better than fine.”

  “I’m fine with fine.”

  “You’re a tough one,” he says.

  I tell him my aunt said the same thing.

  “I like tough,” he says. “Please,” he says. “Let’s try this again.”

  Just because I am sixty-four and a woman, people think I should be happy to be with anyone. But I would rather be alone than be with a bastard like the glass guy, may he rest in peace, or a blowhard who insulted my daughter.

  A FUNNY THING happens. Mom loses an earring at the museum. Mom didn’t even know she lost it, but a few weeks after the party, a docent at the museum calls and says, I think I have your mother’s earring. She describes the earring—emeralds, opals, jade, and diamonds, cut to look like grapes and leaves. I ask her how did she ever figure out it was Mom’s? The docent says, “Did you know your mom used to speak at the high school for Survivor Day? She used to talk about her father the jeweler, and I remembered that his name was Bernheim, and the earring backing says Bernheim.”

  “What a strange thing for you to remember!” I say.

  “I used to love when your mom would come in to speak. It really left an impression,” she says.

  I drive to the museum after Pilates class, and I can’t find the docent anywhere, so I wander around the museum for a spell. I come across a class of older elementary schoolers, maybe fifth graders, and an older man—by which I mean my age—is teaching them how to make block prints. He’s teaching them to carve simple designs into wood, and to dip the wood in ink-filled trays, and to go over the papers with rollers. It’s very messy and I do not generally care for messy things. The man doesn’t wear gloves, which seems like lunacy, and his hands are covered in ink. He has green eyes, a rust-colored beard, and no hair on his head. He is exquisitely patient. The man looks up at me and says, “Can I help you?”

  “No,” I say, “I’m meeting someone, but I couldn’t find her. I like watching you work.”

  He shrugs. “Stay if you like.”

  So I sit in the back and honestly it’s very peaceful, watching the man make the ink prints with the children. The ink has a pleasant medicinal smell. I enjoy the rhythmic swish of the blocks in the trays. But the thing I like most is the low hum of the children concentrating on a task. It was one my favorite things when I used to be an educator.

  When the kids leave, the man says, “Do you want to try?”

  I say, “I’m wearing white. I shouldn’t.”

  He says, “Some other time.”

  He washes his hands in the sink, but they still don’t come clean. And that’s when I remember who he is. He is Andrew with the dirty fingernails. He’s an artist! Had he said he was an artist? I couldn’t even tell you, I was so distracted by those nails. But now I know the dirt is ink, the whole thing feels different.

  “Andrew,” I say.

  “Rachel,” he says.

  “I didn’t recognize you.”

  “I recognized you immediately.”

  “You thought of my picture and added ten years,” I joke.

  “That wasn’t kind of me,” he says.

  “Ah, it’s fine. I’m thick-skinned,” I say. “By the way, it’s not that I’m vain. It’s, well, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I honestly forgot how old the picture was. You know, 2004 doesn’t seem that long ago in certain ways.”

  “Really, I was awful. I’d gone on quite a few dates that went nowhere and I’m afraid I took it out on you,” he says. “I know what you mean, though. Once your children are grown, you lose track of time a bit. Do you have any children? I don’t think you said.”

  “One,” I say. “A daughter. Aviva.”

  “Aviva,” he says. “That’s a beautiful name,” he says. “Tell me something about Aviva.”

  II

  Wherever You Go, There You Are

  Jane

  ONE

  In the middle of a particularly brutal political season, I began to have dreams about Aviva Grossman, Florida’s answer to Monica Lewinsky. Unless you lived in Florida at the turn of the century, you probably won’t remember her. The story briefly made national headlines because Aviva Grossman had foolishly kept an anonymous blog, where she detailed some of the “highlights” of the affair. She never mentioned him by name—but everyone knew! It was speculated that Aviva wouldn’t have kept a blog if she hadn’t wanted everyone to know, but I don’t think so. I think she was young and dumb, and I also think people didn’t truly understand the Internet back then, if indeed they can be said to understand it now. So, okay, Aviva Grossman. As a twenty-year-old intern, Aviva had an affair with Aaron Levin, a congressman from Miami. He was not her “immediate supervisor,” to quote the squishy statement he made during the press conference. “At no time was I the woman’s immediate supervisor,” Congressman Levin said, “and so, while I am deeply sorry for the pain I caused my loved ones, particularly my wife and sons, I assure you that no laws were broken.” The woman! He could not even bring himself to say Aviva Grossman’s name. The details of the affair, which were as tawdry and clichéd and human as you wo
uld expect, were on every local news channel and newspaper for months. One station even had a recurring segment called Avivawatch, as if she were a hurricane or an orca that had mysteriously beached itself. Fifteen years later, Levin’s still in Congress; Aviva Grossman, whose résumé included a dual degree in political science and Spanish literature from the University of Miami, a tenaciously googleable blog, and of course that infamous stint as an intern, couldn’t get a job. They didn’t put a scarlet letter on her chest, but they didn’t need to. That’s what the Internet is for.

  In my dream, though, Aviva Grossman had managed to get past all of that. In my dream, she was in her forties and she had smart, short hair, and she was wearing a neutral pantsuit and a turquoise statement necklace, and she was running for national political office, though my dream wasn’t clear which one. It felt like Congress to me, but maybe that’s too poetically just. But it’s my dream, so let’s call it Congress. In any case, she was at a press conference when a journalist asked her about the affair. At first, Aviva gave a politician’s response—“It was a long time ago and I’m sorry for any pain I caused”—and she sounded not unlike Congressman Levin. The journalist persisted. “Well,” Aviva said, “being the age I am now and being in the position I am now, I can tell you with absolute certainty, I would never sleep with one of my campaign interns. But looking back and thinking about my part in it, my conduct, the only thing I can say . . . the only thing I can say about it is, I was very romantic and I was very young.”

  TWO

  My name is Jane Young. I am thirty-three years old, and I am an event planner, though my business mainly consists of weddings. I was raised in South Florida, but I now reside in Allison Springs, Maine, which is about twenty-five minutes from Portland and which is a popular summer spot for destination weddings. It is less popular in the fall and still less popular in the winter, but I manage. What else can I tell you? I like my work, but no, I did not see myself doing this when I was a kid. The thing I went to college to do, I didn’t end up doing for a variety of reasons, and I found I had a knack for the combination of discipline, communication, psychology, politics, stagecraft, and creativity that planning a wedding requires. Oh, I have a precocious eight-year-old daughter, Ruby, whose father is not in the picture. Ruby is truly clever, though she has probably been around brides more than is healthy. Last week, Ruby told me, “I never want to be a bride. They’re all miserable.”