The Sweetness of Forgetting Read online

  I’m still breathing hard when the door swings open, revealing a woman about my age standing there.

  “Can I help you?” she asks, looking back and forth between Gavin and me.

  “We’re looking for Jacob Levy,” says Gavin, after apparently realizing I can’t get words out.

  The woman shakes her head. “There’s no one here by that name. I’m sorry.”

  My heart sinks. “He’d be in his late eighties? From France originally?”

  The woman shrugs. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “He used to live here, we think,” Gavin says. “Until at least a year ago.”

  “My husband and I moved in in January,” says the woman.

  “Are you sure?” I ask in a small voice.

  “I think I’d notice if some old dude was living with us,” the woman says, rolling her eyes. “Anyhow, the super lives in apartment 102 if you want to check with him.”

  Gavin and I thank her and head back down the stairs.

  “Do you think we came all this way for nothing?” I ask as we descend.

  “No,” Gavin says firmly. “I think Jacob moved somewhere else and we’re going to find him today.”

  “What if he’s dead?” I venture. I hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility, but it’s foolish not to.

  “Elida’s husband didn’t find a death certificate,” Gavin says. “We’ve got to believe he’s still out there somewhere.”

  When we reach the ground floor, Gavin knocks on the door to apartment 102. There’s no answer, and we exchange looks. Gavin knocks again, harder this time, and I’m relieved to hear footsteps coming toward the door a moment later. A middle-aged woman in curlers and a bathrobe opens the door.

  “What?” she asks. “Don’t tell me the plumbing on the seventh is broken again. I can’t handle it.”

  “No ma’am,” Gavin says. “We’re looking for the super.”

  She snorts. “That’s my husband, but he’s mostly worthless. What do you need?”

  “We’re looking for the man who used to live in apartment 1004,” I say. “Jacob Levy. We think he moved out about a year ago.”

  She frowns. “Yeah. He did. So what?”

  “We need to find him,” Gavin says. “It’s very urgent.”

  She narrows her eyes. “You the IRS or something?”

  “What? No,” I say. “We’re . . .” And then I don’t know how to continue. How do I tell her that I’m the granddaughter of the woman he loved seventy years ago? That I might even be his granddaughter?

  “We’re family,” Gavin fills in smoothly. He nods at me. “She’s his family.”

  The words make my heart hurt.

  The woman scrutinizes us for a moment more and shrugs. “Whatever you say. I’ll get you his forwarding address.”

  My heart beats faster as she shuffles back into her apartment. Gavin and I exchange looks again, but I’m too excited to say anything.

  The woman reappears a moment later with a slip of paper. “Jacob Levy. He fell and broke his hip last year,” she says. “He’d been here twenty years, you know. There isn’t no elevator, and when he got back from the hospital, he couldn’t make it up them stairs, what with his hip and all, so the landlord, he offered him the vacant apartment at the end of the hall here. Apartment 101. But Mr. Levy, he said he wanted a view. Picky, if you ask me. So the movers came, end of November.”

  She hands me the slip of paper. On it, there’s an address on Whitehall Street, along with an apartment number.

  “That’s where he asked us to send his final bill,” the woman says. “I got no idea if he’s still there. But that’s where he went from here.”

  “Thank you,” Gavin says.

  “Thank you,” I echo. She’s about to close the door when I reach out my hand. “Wait,” I say. “One more thing.”

  “Yeah?” She looks perturbed.

  “Was he married?” I hold my breath.

  “There wasn’t no Mrs. Levy that I know of,” the woman says.

  I close my eyes in relief. “What . . . what was he like?” I ask after a moment.

  She regards me suspiciously then seems to soften a little. “He was nice,” she says finally. “Always real polite-like. Some of the other tenants here, they treat us like servants, me and my husband. But Mr. Levy, he was always real nice. Always called me ma’am. Always said please and thank you.”

  This makes me smile. “Thanks,” I say. “Thanks for telling me that.”

  I’m about to turn away when she speaks again. “He always seemed sad, though.”

  “Sad?” I ask.

  “Yeah. He went out for a walk every day, and he always came back at night, after dark, looking like he lost something.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper, sorrow flooding through me as we turn away and head out the door. It seems that all those nights Mamie sat waiting for the stars to come out, Jacob was out looking for something too.

  It takes us fifteen minutes to cross east to Whitehall Street and head south to find the address the super’s wife gave us. It turns out to be a modern-looking building that soars above the others around it. There’s no doorman, which I’m relieved about; we won’t have to explain our mission to yet one more person.

  “Apartment 2232,” I say to Gavin as we head for the elevators. The doors slide open and I punch the number 22, tapping my foot impatiently as the doors close.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I murmur as the elevator begins its slow ascent.

  Gavin reaches for my hand and squeezes. “We’re going to find him, Hope,” he says.

  “I don’t know how to thank you for everything you’ve done to help me,” I say, pausing long enough to look into his eyes and smile. For a frozen moment, I’m sure he’s about to kiss me, but then the elevator dings and the doors slide open. We’re here.

  We race down the hall, right and then left, to apartment 2232. It’s the last apartment on the right-hand side of the hall, and as Gavin knocks, I glance out the window at the hall’s end. It’s a beautiful view, out over the southern tip of Manhattan and across the water. But I can’t focus on that now. I turn toward the door and will it to open.

  But there’s no answer, no footsteps from inside.

  “Try again,” I say. Gavin nods and knocks again, more loudly this time. Still nothing. I’m trying not to feel entirely deflated. But what now? “Again,” I say weakly. Gavin raps on the door so loudly this time that the door across the hall opens. An old woman stands there, staring at us.

  “What’s all the racket?” she demands.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Gavin says. “We’re trying to find Jacob Levy.”

  “And you can’t knock like normal human beings?” she asks. “You have to beat down the door?”

  “He’s not answering,” I tell her miserably. I take a deep breath. “Does he still live there? Is he still . . . ?” My voice trails off, but what I’m meaning to ask is whether he’s still alive. It’s a terrible thing to wonder.

  “Calm down,” the woman says. “I don’t know where he is. I don’t even know him. Now if you could kindly keep it down, I’m trying to watch my shows.”

  The door slams before we can say anything else. I feel weak in the knees, and I lean against the wall for support. Gavin settles in beside me and puts his arm around my shoulder. “We’re going to find him, Hope. He’s here. I know it.”

  I nod, but I can’t bring myself to believe it. What if we’ve come all this way, only to find that we’re mere months too late? I glance out the window at the end of the hall again, taking in the beautiful view as tears cloud my vision. Below us stretch a few short blocks of Manhattan, ending in the green tip of Battery Park. Beyond that, across the deep blue water of New York Harbor, lie Governors Island to the left and Ellis Island to the right. I wonder whether that’s where Jacob and my grandmother first arrived in this country. Just beyond Ellis Island is Liberty Island, where I see the Statue of Liberty, holding her torch high. It gleams in the sunlight, and
I think for a minute about the freedom it represents. What must it have been like to enter into this country for the first time, via Ellis Island, passing such a strong symbol of everything this nation stands for?

  And then, just like that, something clicks into place and my jaw drops.

  “Gavin,” I say, grabbing his arm. “I know where he is.”

  “What?” he asks, startled.

  “I know where Jacob is,” I say. “The queen. The queen with the torch. Oh my God, I know where he is!”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Overnight Meringues

  INGREDIENTS

  2 egg whites

  1/2 cup white sugar

  1 tsp. vanilla extract

  1/2 cup chocolate chips

  DIRECTIONS

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites on high speed with a hand mixer until soft peaks form.

  3. Add the sugar, 1/8 cup at a time, beating continuously. Continue to beat until peaks are stiff and stand up on their own.

  4. Reduce mixer speed to low and beat in vanilla.

  5. Fold in chocolate chips gently with a wooden spoon.

  6. Drop by the teaspoon onto baking sheets covered in parchment paper. Try to make sure each mound has at least one chocolate chip. Mounds should easily hold their own shape.

  7. Place pan in oven and immediately turn off heat.

  8. Leave overnight. No peeking allowed! When you wake up the next morning, open the oven; the meringues will be done and ready to serve.

  Rose

  It was July of 1980, and Rose sat, eyes closed, in the living room of the home Ted had built for her. It was hot outside, so hot that even the salty sea breeze wafting in through the windows wasn’t enough to cool her off. On days like this, she longed for Paris, for the way that even in the heat, the city seemed to sparkle. Nothing sparkled here but the water, and that just seemed to Rose a cruel temptation. It taunted her, reminding her that if she only got into a boat and headed east, eventually she would be home, on the distant shores of the country of her birth.

  But she could never go back. She knew that.

  She could hear raised voices in the front room. She wanted to get up and tell them to stop fighting, but she could not. It was not her place. Josephine was thirty-seven now, old enough not to be told what to do by her mother. Rose had already failed in protecting her daughter, in instilling in her the things a good mother should. If she had it all to do again, the choices she would make would be different. She hadn’t realized when she was younger that fate could be decided in a moment, that the smallest decisions could shape your life. Now she knew, and it was too late, too late to change a thing.

  Ted came into the room then. Rose heard his heavy, confident footsteps and smelled the faint, sweet odor of the cigars he liked to smoke on the front porch while listening to Red Sox games on the radio.

  “Jo is at it again,” he said. She opened her eyes to see him staring down at her in concern. “Don’t you hear her?”

  “Yes,” Rose said simply.

  Ted scratched the back of his head and sighed. “I don’t understand. She loves to fight with them.”

  “I did not teach her properly how to love,” Rose said softly. “It is my fault.” That was why Josephine pushed the men who loved her away, Rose knew. Because Rose had kept her at arm’s length. Because Rose had been terrified of relying on the one person she loved the most. Because Rose knew that the people you loved could be taken away one day with no warning. Those were not the lessons she had meant to impart to Josephine. But she had.

  “My dear, it’s not your fault,” Ted said. He sat down beside her on the couch and pulled her to him. She breathed in deeply and let him hold her. She loved him. Not in the way she had loved Jacob, or her family in France, for she had loved them all with an open heart. When one’s heart closed, it was impossible to feel the same. But she loved him in the best way she knew how, and she knew she was loved deeply in return. She knew he longed to reach across the invisible divide that separated them. She wished she could tell him how, but she herself did not know.

  “Of course it is my fault,” Rose said after a moment. They were quiet for a moment as Josephine screamed at her boyfriend that he would only leave her one day anyhow, so why should she bother giving him another chance? “Listen to her,” Rose said after a moment. “The words she is speaking could have come from my mouth.”

  “Nonsense. You never pushed me away like that,” Ted said. “That is not the example you set for her.”

  “No,” Rose said simply. But what she wanted to say was that she had never pushed him away because she had never let him in to begin with. She was a castle surrounded by many defenses. Ted had only made it to the grassy knoll beyond the first moat; there were many more walls to be scaled and many more battles to be fought in order to reach her heart. But Ted didn’t know that. It was better that way.

  They both watched through the window as Hope came toward the house from the backyard, where she’d been playing in the sand at the edge of the dunes. Rose had been keeping an eye on her—she was just five—and hoping that she’d stay out of earshot long enough for her mother to finish arguing with the latest man she’d brought into Hope’s life.

  “I’ll go keep her occupied,” Ted said, starting to rise.

  “No,” Rose said. “I will go.” She kissed Ted on the cheek and headed toward the door. Hope turned and her eyes lit up when her grandmother walked out onto the back porch. For a moment, Rose was too choked up to speak. Hope looked so much like Danielle had looked all those years ago, and sometimes, it was hard for Rose to look at her without seeing the past, without seeing the baby sister whose fate she could not bring herself to fully imagine.

  “Mamie!” Hope called out excitedly. Her brown curls, so similar to the flowing curls Rose herself had sported in her youth, danced in the sea breeze, and her extraordinary green eyes, the color of the sea flecked with gold, shone with excitement. “I caught a crab, Mamie! A big one! It had pinchers and everything!”

  “A crab?” Rose smiled down at her granddaughter. “Oh my! Whatever did you do with it?”

  Hope grinned and blinked up at her grandmother. “Mamie, I let him go! Just like you told me!”

  “Did I tell you that?”

  Hope nodded just once, confidently. “You told me not to hurt anyone or anything if I could help it. And the crab’s an anyone.”

  Rose smiled. She bent to give Hope a hug. “You did the right thing, my dear,” she said. Inside, she could hear the voices of Josephine and her boyfriend rising as they yelled at each other. She cleared her throat, hoping that it would block the sound. “Let’s stay out here for a little while,” she said to her granddaughter. “How about I tell you a story?”

  Hope grinned and hopped up and down for a minute. “I love your stories, Mamie! Can you tell me the one about the prince teaching the princess to be brave?”

  “Of course I can, my dear.” Rose sat down in a deck chair facing the ocean, and Hope scrambled up onto her lap, slinging her tanned legs over the side of the chair and snuggling into Rose’s bosom. Soon, she’d be too big to do this. Rose wished these moments could go on forever, for as long as she could hold her granddaughter in her lap and tell her stories, she could keep her safe and protected.

  “Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a prince and a princess, who fell in love,” she began. As her mouth moved with the familiar words, her heart ached and threatened to overflow. This, she knew, was why she’d done what she’d done. This was why she’d run, why she’d fled Paris, why she’d turned her back on everything. This little girl in her arms wouldn’t be here now if Rose had stayed and accepted her fate. And in that, she knew she’d done the right thing. It was just that in life, there were no clean decisions. Not the big ones, anyhow. To give life to Josephine, and then to Hope, she’d had to trade other lives away. There was no way to justify a tariff like that, no way at all.

&
nbsp; “Tell me more, Mamie, tell me more!” Hope demanded, bouncing up and down on her grandmother’s lap, as Rose paused in the familiar story.

  Rose ruffled her granddaughter’s hair and smiled down at her. “Well, the prince told the princess that she must be brave and strong, and that she must do the right thing, even if it is difficult.”

  “That’s what you always tell me, Mamie!” Hope interrupted. “To do the right thing! Even when it’s hard!”

  Rose nodded. “That’s right. You must always do right. The prince told the princess that he had to save her, that it was the right thing to do. But in order to save her, he had to send her far, far away, to the shores of a magical kingdom. Now, the princess had never been to this magical kingdom, for it was far, far across the great sea, but she had dreamed of it often. She knew that in his great kingdom, there reigned a queen, who shone her light over all the world.”

  “Even at nighttime?” Hope asked, although she’d heard the story a hundred times.

  “Even at night,” Rose assured her.

  “Like a night-light,” Hope said.

  “Yes, very much like a night-light,” Rose said with a smile. “For the light kept everyone feeling safe. Just like your night-light keeps you feeling safe.”

  “The queen sounds nice.”

  “She was a very kind queen,” Rose assured her granddaughter. “Very good and just. The princess knew that if she could make it to the kingdom of the queen, she would be safe, and that one day the prince would come to find her there.”

  “Because he promised,” Hope said.

  “Yes, because he promised,” Rose said softly. “He promised he would meet her just across the moat from the queen’s great throne, where the light shone down. So the princess went across the sea to this kingdom of the wise queen. And there, she was finally safe. While the princess waited for the prince, she met a strong and kind wizard, who recognized her as a princess, even though she was dressed as a pauper. He told the princess that he loved her and that he would protect her all the days of his life.”

  “But what about the prince?” Hope asked. “Is the prince coming?”