Young Jane Young

by Gabrielle Zevin

  He knows your mother because of an event she did for the congressman at the school. “The beautiful Grossman women,” Jorge says. “Good to see you, Rachel. How are you? How’s BRJA?”

  “I was fired,” your mother says to him, in an odd, spiky, almost confrontational way.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Jorge says. “Well, Aviva, I’m actually here to see you.”

  You go out to the back patio, and you sit under the bougainvillea, and your mother brings you both iced teas. Jorge waits for her to leave before he says genially, “You can’t contact him anymore, Aviva. It’s best for everyone that you move on.”

  “It’s best for him,” you say.

  “Everyone,” he insists.

  “I’d move on if I had anywhere to move on to,” you say. “My whole life is ruined,” you say. “No one will ever hire me. No one will even fuck me.”

  “It seems that way,” Jorge says, “but it’s not that bad.”

  “Respectfully,” you say, “how the hell would you know?”

  Jorge doesn’t have an answer.

  “You know about politics. You know about PR. What would you do if you were me?”

  “I’d go back to school. Get a degree in law or a master’s in public policy.”

  “Okay,” you say, “let’s assume I can get a single teacher to write me a recommendation letter. Let’s assume I can manage to get accepted to a school. I incur an additional one hundred thousand dollars or so in student loan debt, and then I apply for jobs again. How is it different? You search my name, and everything’s still there, fresh as the year it happened.”

  Jorge drinks his iced tea. “If you don’t go back to school, you could do volunteer work. Make a new name for yourself—”

  “Tried that,” you say. “They don’t want me either.”

  “Maybe what you need is witness protection,” he jokes. “New name. New town. New job.”

  “Probably so,” you say.

  “I honestly don’t know what you should do,” Jorge says. “But I do know something . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “You said no one would fuck you. That’s not true. You’re a beautiful girl.”

  You are not a beautiful girl, and even if you were, you know that is not related to how much sex a person has. Plenty of ugly people have sex. Plenty of ordinary people have sex. Plenty of beautiful people spend their nights alone.

  You are not beautiful. You are interesting looking, and your large breasts signify to men that you are sexy and easy and a little dumb. You know exactly what you are, and since the scandal and its ensuing coverage, you know exactly how people see you. There is nothing that anyone could say about you or to you that is surprising. You have not spent the summer in your parents’ pool and suddenly turned beautiful. And again, there are always people to have sex with, if you set your standards low enough. What you’d meant is, No one I’d want to sleep with will want to sleep with me.

  This is to say, you know that Jorge is flattering you.

  If you decide to sleep with Jorge anyway.

  If you ask him to leave.

  You walk over to where he is sitting, and you kiss him. You don’t want him, so much as you want anyone. You take him upstairs, and you decide you’d rather have sex in the guest room than your childhood bedroom, surrounded by high school yearbooks and framed drama club ephemera.

  You go in the guest room, and you lock the door.

  You can tell he’s experienced, which is fortunate. You, despite being the star player in a sex scandal, remain as inexperienced as can be.

  When he touches you, you shiver with pleasure. You feel like a blade of grass, and he is a warm summer wind.

  “So much lusciousness,” Jorge says.

  Click here.

  You miss a period, but you don’t even notice.

  Click here.

  You miss another period.

  A few days later, you find yourself with your head over the toilet.

  “Aviva,” your mother calls. “Are you sick?”

  “Perfecting my eating disorder,” you reply.

  “That’s a repulsive thing to say,” your mother says.

  “Sorry,” you say. “I think I am getting sick.”

  Your mother brings you soup, and you pull the covers over your head.

  You’ve seen movies, you’ve read novels, and you have a pretty strong inkling what this might be.

  You had been on the Pill, but maybe you’d gotten sloppy with taking the prescription. What was the point? You weren’t having sex.

  You take a pregnancy test.

  Blue line, but it looks smudged.

  You take another pregnancy test, just to make sure you did it right.

  Blue line.

  You consider having an abortion. Of course you do. You know there is no earthly reason you should bring a child into this mess you call your life. You have no job, no prospects, no partner. You are profoundly lonely. You know that this is not a reason to have a child.

  You believe in a woman’s right to choose. You would never vote for someone who didn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose.

  If you decide to have an abortion.

  If you continue with the pregnancy.

  Your last semester of college, you took an advanced political science seminar called Gender and Politics. The seminar was led by a silver-haired woman in her late forties, who had recently had a baby. She would bring the baby—a boy—to class in a papoose. Despite the fact that he was the only male in the seminar and the discussions sometimes got quite heated, the baby never cried and almost seemed soothed by the discussion. You were jealous of that baby. You wished you might be brand-new, male, and in a papoose on a political scientist’s back.

  The class, however, was something of a wash. Maybe it wasn’t the class but the mood you were in at the time. The scandal had passed, but you were filled with bile and rage. Around the middle of the semester, the professor stopped you after class.

  “Don’t give up on us feminists,” the professor said.

  “I haven’t,” you said.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb here. Your paper—‘Why I’ll Never Be a Feminist: A Gender-free Approach to Public Policy’—perhaps that suggests otherwise?” She looked at you with kind but mirthful eyes.

  “It’s Swiftian,” you said. “It’s satire.”

  “Is it?” she asked.

  “Why should I be a feminist? When everything happened, none of you exactly rushed to my defense,” you said.

  “No,” she said. “We probably should have. The power imbalance between you and Levin was obscene. I think, on some level, it was in the greater public interest to not defend you. He’s a good congressman. He’s good on women’s issues, too. It’s not perfect.”

  “The Miami Herald wrote that I had set the feminist cause back fifty years. How exactly did I do that?”

  “You didn’t.”

  “She stood by him. Didn’t she set feminism back more than me? Isn’t it more feminist to leave your cheating spouse? Honestly, I’ve been sitting in this class for five whole weeks—not to mention, I’ve been a woman my whole life—and I don’t even know what a feminist is,” you say. “What the hell is it?”

  “From my point of view as a political science professor, it’s the belief that all sexes should be treated equally before the law.”

  “Obviously I know that,” you said. “So what’s wrong with my paper?”

  “The problem with it is that gender exists,” she said. “Differences exist, and the law must acknowledge that or the law isn’t fair.”

  “Fine,” you say. “You held me after class. Is there something you want?”

  “You didn’t ask me the next logical question,” she said. “What is feminism from my point of view as a woman and as a human being?”

  Who fucking cares? you thought.

  “It’s the right every woman has to make her own choices. People don’t have to like your choices, Aviva, but you have a right
to make them. Embeth Levin has a right to make them, too. Don’t expect a parade.”

  You tried not to roll your eyes.

  “I’d like you to give that paper another think,” she said.

  The next week, you chose to drop the seminar.

  You want this baby, even though it defies logic.

  You do not expect a parade.

  You must change your life.

  The clock is ticking. You have seven months to change your life.

  You need to find employment, but you are Internet infamous. There is nowhere you can move that is far enough away.

  You could stay home and let your parents support you and the baby. But the baby would still be the daughter of “Aviva Grossman,” and who wants to do that to a kid?

  You could go back to school, but what would that solve? As you told Jorge, you would still be “Aviva Grossman” at the end of it.

  The problem is your name.

  If you stay home.

  If you change your name.

  Everything is online. Maybe they can find out about you, but there’s some justice in the fact that you can find out about anything. You google “legal name changes, Florida.” In less than five minutes, you find out everything you need to know: how long it will take, where you’ll have to go, what it will cost, and what documents you will need.

  You pay for a background check to prove that you have committed no crimes. You haven’t, by the way.

  You go to the police station to have your fingerprints taken, and you sign your name for a notary.

  You file a Legal Change of Name form at the courthouse.

  The clerk reads through your paperwork. She says, “Everything looks in order.”

  “Is that it?” you say.

  “That’s it,” she says. There’s a long line, and she doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done. She cares that your paperwork

  has been filled out correctly, which it has been. You feel a swell of gratitude for bureaucracy, for government.

  Still, you expect someone to try to stop you. You expect media to show up. No one does, or maybe no one cares about you anymore. You aren’t, after all, Tom Cruise. You aren’t famous. You are infamous, and maybe people tire of infamous people when they stop doing infamous things.

  The clerk schedules a hearing.

  No one objects to your petition, so the hearing is canceled.

  Your name is changed.

  You are Jane Young.

  Click here.

  You go to your grandmother to ask for money. You know she’ll give it to you, but you hate to do it anyhow.

  She is so tiny, tinier than your mother. She is barely larger than a child. When you hug her, you think you might crush her. She wears slacks with thin belts and flats with capped heels. She is always dressed just so. An Hermès scarf. A quilted Chanel handbag. Things well made and chosen with care. Things cared for once they were chosen. Suede shoes are brushed. Necklaces are wrapped in paper so they don’t tangle. The handbag has its own bag and is stuffed with tissue paper when it is not in use. You remember pleasant afternoons passed in your grandmother’s closet. “When you have little, mine Aviva, you learn to take care. When you have much, you must accept that you could someday have little,” she would say. “To take care of something is to love it.”

  If she leaves the house, there must be earrings. Today’s earrings are fruit made from jewels—jade, emeralds. They’re her favorite. Her father made them, and they’re one of the only things she brought from Germany. All she has from Germany is that which she brought, because she will never buy anything German as long as she lives. Someday, she promises to leave the earrings to you. But you hate thinking of “someday” because someday she will be dead. Who will call you “mine Aviva” when she is gone?

  You tell her you need to go away, to start fresh. You say you’re sorry for everything, for the shame you’ve brought on her and Aunt Mimmy and the Grossman family.

  She gets out her checkbook and she puts on her reading glasses with the delicate filigree chain and she takes out her tiny polka-dot checkbook pen. She asks you how much you need.

  You ask for ten thousand dollars. You’re not as dumb as you once were. You know ten thousand dollars won’t last very long, but it will give you enough to start over.

  She writes a check for twenty thousand dollars, and then she pulls you close to her. She smells like carnations and apples and talcum powder and Chanel No. 5. “I love you, mine Aviva,” she says.

  You almost cry to hear the way her German accent wraps around the syllables of your name.

  “That man was no good,” she says, “and if Grandpa were still alive, he would cut off his balls.”

  YOU LEAVE YOUR mother a note, saying you’re leaving town and you’ll call her once you’re settled.

  You buy a bus ticket to Portland, Maine, and when you get to Portland, you buy a cheap car.

  You drive to Allison Springs, where your parents once took you on vacation.

  It’s winter, so the town is empty.

  You rent an apartment just outside the center of town. It’s one bedroom, five hundred square feet. The walls have recently been painted to exorcise the memory of the prior tenants, and everything still smells of fumes. The apartment feels enormous because you have nothing.

  You eat lobster rolls and think about jobs you could do.

  You are willing to work hard, but you want something with flexible hours. You have a baby on the way.

  Also, you’re sick of bosses. You want to be your own boss, but you don’t have much money to start a business.

  You’re in your apartment, weighing your options, and a movie with Jennifer Lopez comes on television. It’s a dumb fairy tale, where she falls in love with the person for whom she’s planning a wedding. You are through with fairy tales. You will never have a workplace romance again. However, you are interested in her business. You try not to consider what it means that you are watching romantic comedies for occupational advice.

  What do you really need to be an event planner? What does JLo have?

  A desk. A phone number. A business card. A computer.

  I could do that, you think.

  Events by Jane, you think.

  You have made decisions in worse ways before.

  In the early aughties, not all businesses have websites, and there’s an enormous advantage for those that do. You have a certain amount of online skills, thanks to your years with the congressman, and you are easily able to build a website.

  You wait for the phone to ring.

  After a week, it does.

  Your first potential client is a woman named Mrs. Morgan. You arrange to meet her at a coffee shop in town.

  You put on a black shift dress. You still aren’t showing very much, though your breasts are enormous. Nothing to be done.

  Mrs. Morgan is throwing a benefit to expand English as a second language program in area schools.

  “Is there a lot of need for that in Maine?” you ask.

  “Oh God, yes! Mainly Spanish, but other languages, too,” Mrs. Morgan says. She has a loud voice that she uses to state her many opinions. You have the sense that time is precious with her: she’s just come from something, and she’s on her way to something else. You like her immediately. She reminds you of a WASP version of your grandmother. “That’s why I called you actually. I saw the Spanish literature on your résumé. I thought it would be marvelous to have an event planner who had an appreciation for other languages.

  “Also, my regular planner has disappointed me twice. You are allowed to disappoint me once and then I will move on. Do you understand me, Jane?”

  “Yes,” you say.

  “I see you’re expecting,” Mrs. Morgan says. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  “No,” you say. “I’m young”—you acknowledge this is so, and yet you feel so old—”and I want to work. I need to work.”

  “Fair enough, young Jane Young,” she says. “And have you planned man
y events?”

  “Well, this is a new career for me. I’m actually transitioning. I thought I was going to work in politics.”

  “Politics,” Mrs. Morgan says. “How interesting. What made you change course?”

  YOU GIVE BIRTH to a little girl and you call her Ruby. Ruby is a good baby, but she is still a baby. She makes copious amounts of excrement. She requires an endless supply of paper products, an endless supply of everything. She doesn’t cry much, but she rarely sleeps either. You have no friends, no husband, no money to hire a regular nanny, no one to help you. You can’t stop working either. You need the money. So Ruby learns to be quiet, and you learn to keep stress out of your voice when you take work calls. You find a babysitter you like. You order flower arrangements while you give Ruby baths. Ruby’s first word is “canapé.”

  You don’t always feel like you love Ruby as much as you should. Where is room for love? All you have is fear and a to-do list. But you take care of her as best as you can, and you think of what your grandmother said: “To take care of something is to love it.” You, who try to regret as little as possible, regret that Ruby will not know her great-grandmother.

  You think about calling your mother, but you don’t. This decision is not about your mother. For a long time, for right or for wrong, you were angry at her, but you aren’t any longer. You can forgive your mother, and because you have your own child, you know that she must have forgiven you. You don’t tell your mother to come because you don’t want to have to explain that part of your life to Ruby.

  When people ask you, you say Ruby’s dad was killed overseas. They assume he was a soldier, but you never explicitly say that. You drop a few intriguing details and people form a narrative of their own. Poor Jane Young, whose husband was in the Marine Corps! Was he killed in Baghdad? Fallujah? Ah, best not to ask her too many questions. Poor Ruby Young—she never even got to meet her father!