The Sweetness of Forgetting Read online

  “Sorry,” she mumbles.

  “I know,” I say. I take a deep breath. I hate being the bad guy, especially when she’s getting it from all sides, but as her mom, I also can’t let that kind of behavior stand. “Kiddo, I’m afraid you’re grounded for the next two days. No phone either.”

  “You’re grounding me?” She’s incredulous.

  “You know better than to talk to me like that,” I say, “or to take things out on me. The next time you’re upset about something, just come talk to me, Annie. I’ve always been here for you.”

  “I know.” She pauses and looks at me in anguish. “Wait, does this mean I can’t call any more Levys?”

  “Not for the next two days,” I say. “You can start again Tuesday afternoon.”

  Her jaw drops. “You are so mean,” she says.

  “So I’ve heard,” I say.

  She glares at me. “I hate you!” she tells me.

  I sigh. “Yeah, and you’re a real peach too,” I reply. “Go to your room. I’m going to go have a talk with your dad.”

  As I pull up to the house I used to live in, the first thing I notice is that the pink salt spray roses in the front garden, the ones that I carefully and lovingly tended for eight years, are gone. All of them. They were here just weeks ago when I was here last.

  The second thing I notice is that there’s a woman in the garden wearing a pink bikini top and denim cutoff shorts, despite the fact that it can’t be more than fifty-five degrees out. She’s at least a decade younger than I am, and her long, blonde hair is gathered into a high ponytail that looks like it should be giving her a massive headache. I hope it’s giving her a headache. I can only assume that she’s Sunshine, recent torturer of my daughter. I suddenly want, more than anything in the world, to gun the engine and flatten her against the soil. Thankfully, I am not actually a murderess, so I refrain. But at the very least, I sure would like to pull her perky ponytail until she screams.

  I put the car in Park and take the keys out of the ignition. She stands up and looks at me as I step out of the car. “Who are you?” she asks.

  Wow, an A plus for manners, I think. “I’m Annie’s mother,” I reply crisply. “You must be, what is it, Raincloud?”

  “Sunshine,” she corrects.

  “Ah, of course,” I say. “Is Rob in?”

  She tosses her ponytail over her right shoulder and then her left. “Yeah,” she says finally. “He’s, like, inside.”

  Well, she talks like a twelve-year-old. No wonder she feels as if she has to compete with my daughter; they’re obviously at the same maturity level. I sigh and head for the door.

  “Aren’t you even going to say thank you?” she calls after me.

  I turn and smile at her. “No. No, I’m not.”

  I ring the doorbell, and Rob comes to the door a moment later, wearing only a pair of swim trunks. What is this, naked day? Do they not realize the temperatures are dipping into the low forties tonight? To his credit, he looks somewhat flustered when he realizes it’s me.

  “Oh, hey, Hope,” he says. He takes a few steps back and grabs a T-shirt from the basket of laundry that sits beside the laundry room off the front hall. He pulls it on quickly. “I wasn’t expecting you. How’s, uh, your grandmother?”

  His concern, feigned or otherwise, surprises me momentarily. “She’s fine,” I say quickly. Then I shake my head. “No, she’s not. I don’t know why I just said that. She’s still in a coma.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Rob says.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  We stand there for a moment, staring at each other, before Rob remembers his manners. “Sorry, you want to come in?”

  I nod and he steps aside to let me pass. Walking into my old house feels like entering a Twilight Zone version of my former life. Everything’s the same, but different. Same view of the bay out the back picture windows, but different curtains hanging from the windows. Same curving staircase up to the second floor, but another woman’s purse sitting on the landing. I shake my head and follow him into the kitchen.

  “Want some iced tea or a soda or something?” he offers.

  “No, thanks.” I shake my head. “I’m not staying. I need to go see Mamie. I just need to talk to you about something first.”

  Rob sighs and scratches his head. “Look, is this about the makeup again? I think you’re overreacting, but I’ve been trying to be strict about it, okay? She came home the other day with lipstick on, and I made her wipe it off and give me the tube.”

  “I appreciate that,” I say. “But that’s not what this is about.”

  “Then what?” he asks, spreading his arms wide. We stand there for a moment and stare at each other, neither of us making a move to sit down or relax.

  “Sunshine,” I say flatly.

  He blinks a few times, and I know, just from that simple reaction, that he realizes what I’m about to say, and he knows I’m right. It’s funny how spending a dozen years with a person lets you learn all their tells.

  He laughs uneasily. “Hope, c’mon, it’s over between me and you,” he says. “You can’t be jealous that I’ve moved on.”

  I just stare at him. “Rob, seriously? That’s what you think I’m here about?”

  He smirks at me for a moment, but when I don’t drop my gaze, the smarmy expression falls from his face and he shrugs. “I don’t know. What are you here about?”

  “Look,” I say, “I don’t care who you date. But when it impacts Annie negatively, that’s when I get involved. And you’re dating a woman who apparently feels like she has to compete with Annie for your affections.”

  “They’re not competing for my affections,” Rob says, but from the tiny upturn of his mouth at the corners, I wonder for a moment whether, in fact, he’s completely aware of what’s going on and is getting some sort of sick egotistical rush out of it. I wish for the zillionth time that I’d realized in my early twenties that having a baby with a selfish man meant that my child would always have to deal with that selfishness too. I’d been too naive to realize then that you can’t change a man. And my daughter is paying for that mistake.

  I close my eyes for a moment, trying to summon some patience. “Annie told me about the silver necklace,” I say, “which she found sitting out on the counter in her bathroom, where Sunshine obviously left it—along with your note—to rub it in Annie’s face that you’re choosing her.”

  “I’m not choosing anyone,” Rob protests, but he looks embarrassed.

  “Yeah,” I say, “and that’s the problem. You’re Annie’s father. And that counts for so much more than whatever you are to the girl you’ve been dating for thirty-five seconds. You should be choosing Annie. Always. In every situation. And when Annie’s wrong, yes, you have to let her know, but not in a way that makes her feel like you’re picking someone else over her. You’re her father, Rob. And if you don’t start acting like it, you’re going to crush her.”

  “I’m not trying to hurt her,” he says. And from the slight whine to his voice, I know he means it, for whatever that’s worth.

  “You also have to be aware of how the people you let into your life treat her,” I continue. “If you’re dating someone who’s going out of her way to hurt your daughter, don’t you think there’s maybe something wrong with that? On a few different levels?”

  Rob looks down and shakes his head. “There’s no way for you to know the whole situation.” He scratches the back of his neck and turns to look out the picture window for a long time. I follow his gaze to a gaggle of white sailboats bobbing on the perfectly blue horizon, and I wonder whether he’s thinking, as I am, about the days early in our marriage, when he and I used to take the boat out on the water near Boston without a care in the world. Then again, it occurs to me that I was pregnant at that time, and very apt to get seasick, and Rob would just look away as I threw up over the side of the boat. He always got what he wanted—his pliable, willing wife alongside him, creating a picture-perfect couple—and I al
ways pasted a smile on and made it work. Had that been the nature of our whole marriage? Could it be summed up that easily, in the image of me vomiting off the side of a sailboat while Rob pretended not to notice?

  We turn back to each other at the same moment, and I wonder whether, on some level, he’s aware of what I’m thinking. He surprises me by bowing his head and saying, “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

  I’m so startled that I can’t even find the words to respond. I’m not sure he’s conceded to anything in the entire time I’ve known him. “Okay,” I say finally.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he says. “I’m sorry I hurt her.”

  “Okay,” I say, and I really am grateful. Not to him, because he’s the one who screwed up and inflicted harm on my daughter in the first place. But I’m grateful for the fact that Annie won’t have to suffer anymore, and that she still has a father who cares at least a little bit, even if he has to be nudged in the right direction in order to do the right thing.

  I’m also grateful, more so than I’d previously realized, to be out of this life with my ex-husband. My mistake wasn’t in letting the marriage end; it was in fooling myself into believing that marrying him was a good idea in the first place.

  I think suddenly of the stories Alain has told me about Mamie and Jacob, and I realize, with a crushing clarity, that I’ve never had anything even close to that. Not with Rob, not with anyone. I’m not sure I even believed in it before, so it never felt like I was missing anything. Alain’s stories are making me sad, not just for Mamie but for myself.

  I smile at Rob, and as I do, I realize I’m grateful for something else too. I’m grateful that he let me go. I’m grateful that he felt it necessary to have an affair with a twenty-two-year-old. I’m grateful that he took it upon himself to end our marriage. Because that means that there’s a tiny chance, however small, that it’s not too late for me after all. Now I just have to find a way to believe in the kind of love Alain’s talking about.

  “Thank you,” I say to Rob. And without another word, I turn and head for the door. Sunshine is standing in the front garden, her hands on her hips, looking pissed, as I walk out the front door. I wonder whether she’s been standing there the entire time, trying to string together words to say to me. If so, I must remember to congratulate Rob on his pick of an intellectual superstar.

  “You know, you can’t be rude to me at my own house,” Sunshine says, again tossing her long ponytail back and forth in a way that makes her look like a stubborn horse with a twitchy tail.

  “I’ll bear that in mind if I ever come to your house,” I tell her brightly. “But since this is not your house, but rather the house I lived in for the last decade, I’d suggest you keep your comments to yourself.”

  “Well, it’s not like you live here anymore,” she says, and then she wiggles her hips oddly and smirks at me, like she’s just said something deeply devastating. In fact, she’s just reinforced my newfound feeling of tremendous freedom, and I smile.

  “You’re right,” I reply. “I absolutely don’t. Thank God.” I cross the garden, stepping across the ground where my beloved roses used to be, until I’m standing face-to-face with her. “One more thing, Sunshine,” I say calmly. “If you do anything to hurt my daughter, and I mean anything, I will spend the rest of my life making sure you regret it.”

  “You’re crazy,” she mutters, taking a step back.

  “Is that right?” I ask cheerfully. “Well, push me the wrong way, and I guess you’ll find out.”

  As I walk away, I can hear her muttering behind me. I climb into my car, start the engine, and back onto the main road. I head west, toward Hyannis, for I plan to spend the rest of the day with Mamie, beginning to understand the lessons in love that I didn’t realize I was missing until right about now.

  Chapter Nineteen

  North Star Blueberry Muffins

  MUFFINS

  INGREDIENTS

  Streusel topping (see recipe below)

  1/2 cup butter

  1 cup granulated sugar

  2 large eggs

  2 cups flour

  2 tsp. baking powder

  1/2 tsp. salt

  1/4 cup milk

  1/4 cup sour cream

  1 tsp. vanilla extract

  2 cups blueberries

  DIRECTIONS

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.

  2. Prepare streusel as directed below. Set aside.

  3. In a large bowl, using a hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar. Add eggs, beating well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter-sugar mixture, alternating with the milk, sour cream, and vanilla. Mix until just fully combined.

  5. Gently fold in the blueberries.

  6. For oversized muffins, fill each muffin cup nearly to the top. Sprinkle generously with streusel topping.

  7. Bake for 25–30 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in pan, then move to wire rack to cool completely.

  STREUSEL TOPPING

  INGREDIENTS

  1/2 cup granulated sugar

  1/4 cup flour

  1/4 cup very cold butter, chopped into small cubes

  2 tsp. cinnamon

  DIRECTIONS

  Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process with quick pulses, until mixture has consistency of thick crumbs. Sprinkle over unbaked muffins, as directed above.

  Rose

  For years, in the darkness of the night in this idyllic Cape Cod town so far from where she’d come, the mental pictures always came back to Rose. Unbidden. Unwanted. Images she had never seen in person but that were burned into her memory nonetheless. Sometimes, imagination was a stronger painter than reality.

  Crying children being torn from their dead-eyed mothers.

  Filthy huddles of people being hosed down in piles while they screamed.

  The terror on parents’ faces at the very moment they realized there was no going back.

  Children in long lines being herded systematically to their deaths.

  And always, in those images that played like an endless picture show across her mind, the people had the faces of her family, her friends, the people she loved.

  And Jacob. Jacob, who had loved her. Jacob, who had saved her. Jacob, whom she’d foolishly, horribly sent back to die.

  And now, in the dark netherworld of her coma, the images of those she’d loved were floating before her like a picture show. She had imagined so many times what might have happened to them that she could see it now just as if she had witnessed it with her own eyes.

  As she drifted through this dark, underwater world between life and death, she could see Danielle and David being ripped from her mother, their little faces streaked with tears, their eyes wide with confusion, their screams vivid in her ears. She wondered how they had died. Right there in the Vel’ d’Hiv, just blocks from the Eiffel Tower, in whose shadow they had lived their whole short lives? Or later, in the crowded, airless train cars on the way to camps like Drancy or Beaune-la-Rolande or Pithiviers? Or did they make it all the way to Auschwitz, only to be led in a neat, orderly line into a gas chamber, where they surely would have gasped in terror for their final breaths? Did they cry out? Did they understand what was happening to them?

  Maman and Papa. Had they been separated in the Vel’ d’Hiv, or not until they were taken away from France? How had Papa borne being ripped from the family he had always so fiercely protected? Had he fought back? Had he been struck by the guards, beaten for his obstinacy? Or had he gone willingly, already resigned to the futility of it all? Had Maman been left alone, with the children huddled around her, knowing the terrible truth that she could no longer protect them? How would it feel to realize you were no longer in control of your fate, no longer able to protect the children you would gladly die to save?

  Helene. It broke Rose’s hea
rt every time she thought of her older sister. What if she had tried harder to reason with her? Could she have saved her if only she’d managed to convince her that the world had lost all logic and had gone mad? Had Helene regretted, in her final moments, not believing Rose? Or had she held out hope until the end that perhaps they were only being sent away to work, and not to die? Somehow, Rose always imagined her slipping away in her sleep, peaceful, alone, although she knew from the ghosts that her end had likely been much different. Each time she thought of how Helene had reportedly been beaten to death, simply for being too ill to work, Rose had to run to the bathroom to throw up, and for days afterward, she couldn’t hold down a meal.

  Claude. Just thirteen, he had tried so hard to be grown up, to pretend to understand the things that adults understood. But he was a child the last time Rose saw him. Had he become the adult he’d always wanted to be in the few days inside the Vel’ d’Hiv? Had he been forced to understand things he shouldn’t have known for years? Did he try to protect the younger ones, or his sister, or his mother? Or had he remained a child, terrified of what was happening? Had he made it onto a transport to Auschwitz? Had he survived there for a while, or had he been drawn out of line upon his arrival, judged to be too young or too small to work, and sent immediately to the gas chamber? What had he said with this last breath? What had been his last waking thought?

  Alain. The one Rose loved the best. And the one who understood everything, although he was only eleven. Her heart ached most of all for him, because without the cloak of denial that the others had managed to wrap themselves in, there was no way to dull the pain. He would have felt every moment of it, because he understood it all, understood what was happening, believed Jacob’s urgent warnings. Had he been frightened? Or had he grown up in those moments and decided to meet his fate with brave resilience? He was tougher than Rose was, tougher than all of them. Had he used that bravery to rise above the terror? Rose felt sure that he hadn’t lived long; he was much smaller than Claude, very small for his age, and no guard in his right mind would have selected such a little boy for work duty. When Rose closed her eyes at night, she often saw Alain’s little face, his eyes somber, his rosy cheeks sallowed, his beautiful blond hair shaved, as he awaited the fate he knew was coming in the midst of a thousand other children in the cold darkness of a gas chamber somewhere in Poland.